Quotes on Books

Real people speak in my books about the main events of the age, such as the war, the Chernobyl disaster, and the downfall of a great empire.

Being transgender is more than just medical books and everything, procedures. It's something spiritual in which you're finding yourself and really discovering who you are and learning to love yourself.

I was very lucky to have a father who read to us when we were children. And he didn't just read books - he brought them alive. We couldn't wait for the next chapter. So my love of reading started early and has stayed with me all my life.

In a television interview, I said that diversity in our children's books should include the adventures of disabled children, travellers and gipsies, LGBT teens, different cultures, classes, colours, religions. It shouldn't be a token gesture, nor do such stories need to be 'issue-based'.

Growing up devouring horror comics and novels, and being inspired to become a writer because of horror novels, movies, and comic books, I always knew I was going to write a horror novel.

I write about characters that interest me. And I don't think of my books as being forms of entertainment.

Theories, books and ideas created within ivory towers had real-world consequences.

I've always done more than I ever thought I would. Becoming a professor - I never would have imagined that. Writing books - I never would have imagined that. Getting a Ph.D. - I'm not sure I would even have imagined that. I've lived my life a step at a time. Things sort of happened.

It was mostly through pop culture, through hip-hop, through Dungeons & Dragons and comic books that I acquired much of my vocabulary.

When I was publishing my first books, the previous generation of authors was fading away, so I was welcomed because I was a new author.

I read. I order books from the States. I literally go into bookstores, close my eyes, and take things off the shelf. If I don't like the book after a bit, I don't finish it. But I like to be surprised.

People ask me, 'Why are you still writing books?' Like I'm still only writing to make money and as soon as I have enough I'll quit and go fishing? I like to write books. It's the most satisfying thing I do.

Sometimes I'm asked if I do research for my stories. The answer is yes and no. No, in the sense that I seldom plow through books at the library to gather material. Yes, in the sense that the first fifteen years of my life turned out to be one big research project.

I have been attacked in Turkey more for my interviews than for my books. Political polemicists and columnists do not read novels there.

Books were the window from which I looked out of a rather meager and decidedly narrow room onto a rich and wonderful universe. I loved the look and feel of books, even the smell... Libraries were treasure houses. I always entered them with a slight thrill of disbelief that all their endless riches were mine for the borrowing.

One of the great needs of Negro children is to have books about themselves and their lives that can help them be proud.

I think books with spiritual themes simply point to the deeper mysteries of life - to what lies beyond us, to what's hidden inside of us, or perhaps to an understanding of what truly matters.

There were a lot of things I loved about working in a library, but mostly I miss the library patrons. I love books, but books are everywhere. Library patrons are as various and oddball and democratic as library books.

Although I'm not actually embarrassed by this, I tend not to read books that have awesome movies made from them, regardless of how well or badly the movie represented the actual written story.

If people buy my books for vanity, I consider it a tax on idiocy.

Today we read books 'extensively,' often without sustained focus, and with rare exceptions we read each book only once. We value quantity of reading over quality of reading. We have no choice, if we want to keep up with the broader culture.