Quotes About Books

I never wanted to go to university: books seemed to have all the answers, and the questions, too. I went to work for Jean Muir as her in-house model. Miss Muir - as she will always be to me - was interested in everything.

Books in a large university library system: 2,000,000. Books in an average large city library: 10,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30,000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20,000.

I never had a single female professor throughout my whole education, from the beginning of university to the end. Even all the books were about men; I never really liked reading books about the history of science, and I never really understood why.

In the university library my father helped lead, as the Associate Director of Libraries from '60 to '82, I spent hours and hours as a kid devouring piles of books so I could follow the latest advances in science.

I still feel threatened by academics, but my books have a lot of academic in-jokes and everybody assumes I went to university and studied English.

My university degree is in art and, yes, I do a lot of drawing for all my books. I have a big drafting table set up in a spare bedroom and I cover it with maps and house plans and sketches that I use in the books. Also, I truly love architecture, so that plays a big part in all my books.

I don't think I'm an unkind person, I don't think my books are unkind, and I don't think my readers are unkind.

Reading groups, readings, breakdowns of book sales all tell the same story: when women stop reading, the novel will be dead.

We were fortunate enough to have several good books detailing the camps and the women. Some were by the survivors. I also got to talk to some of the women who had been in the camp, survivors.

My husband, Nick Chiles and I wrote a number of relationship books together, and what we found was that women were thirsty to hear directly from men.

Self-help books for women are part of a multibillion-dollar industry, sensitively attuned to our insecurities and our purses.

That earns him a smack with my book bag. "Ow." He clutches his arm. "What do you have in there? Books?" A grin snakes across his face. "I like my women feisty." He adds, "I like my broken.

Literary fiction is kept alive by women. Women read more fiction, period.

It is difficult to get men to pick up a female author. Women will read men, but men won't read women.

For life is too short to resign ourselves to reading poorly written books and sleeping with women we don't love.

'Goodnight Moon' is a staple of any nursery bookshelf. So, too, are 'Harold and the Purple Crayon' and 'Madeline.' These books are just as much a part of mainstream reading culture as 'The Catcher in the Rye,' and they are passed down from generation to generation.

I'm such a fan of films and books like 'Lord of the Rings' and even 'Star Wars,' despite the fact that, as an actor, I'll never be employed by them.

I know that 'The Accident' is not a completely accurate reflection of the reality of the book publishing world, which, like nearly any other business, consists mostly of people sitting in small offices staring at computer screens or reading or trying to stay awake in meetings.

I love thinking of movie stars who could play the characters in the books I write.

While writing my first 90 books, I was magazine editor, publisher, book publisher, executive, etc., so I was established in publishing. three of my seven or so books were biographies of sports stars and really opened doors for me in that area.

I'm a novelist who read a lot as a kid. When you grow up on books and then grow up to write books, famous authors are a lot more meaningful to you than TV and movie stars.

I didn't care for most of the books I was being asked to read in school. I started reading like crazy right after high school when I got a job in a mental hospital. I was working my way through college, and I did a lot of night shifts, and there was nothing to do. So I read like crazy, serious stuff, all the classics.

I started reading when I was about three, a little over three.

At a time when there's younger writers starting up and it's inevitable that you're becoming less fashionable, at a time when the industrial pressures apply more and more to books, how do you keep a book you wrote 28 years ago selling well year on year? Because it really is getting harder.