I like film books at the bottom of the barrel and art books at the top. 'The Ghastly One,' by Jimmy McDonough, is a hilarious biography of one of the most hideous directors who ever picked up a movie camera - Andy Milligan.

I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.

Normally, I could hit hard enough, as anyone who studied my fights might have known. But the impression was that I was essentially defensive, the very reverse of a killer, the prize fighter who read books, even Shakespeare.

It's been a challenge for me my whole life in that my insides don't necessarily match my outsides... People try to strike up a conversation with me about Dungeons & Dragons or comic books, and I'm like, 'I can't. I'm sorry.'

I was working at Nordstrom Rack, Borders Books, and I was cleaning yachts on the weekends for private parties and being a busboy. I had to break down the tables and roll the forks up in napkins. And I was still doing standup.

We are one people with one family. We all live in the same house... and through books, through information, we must find a way to say to people that we must lay down the burden of hate. For hate is too heavy a burden to bear.

From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' my first collection was of John Bunyan's works in separate little volumes.

The 'Backlisted' podcast describes itself as 'giving new life to old books'. In each episode, John Mitchinson and Andy Miller are joined by a guest from the world of books who brings along some overlooked gem to enthuse about.

I think it's fascinating to look at a world that an author has created that has sort of stemmed from the world now, and usually dystopian books point out something about our current world and exaggerates a tendency or a belief.

Reviewing good puzzle books is frustrating, because you get to page one of the introduction, find a curious puzzle, become engrossed for 20 minutes, miss your stop and then fail to get home in time to say goodnight to the kids.

Books change us. Books save us. I know this because it happened to me. Books saved me. So, I do believe through stories we can learn to change, we can learn to empathize and be more connected with the universe and with humanity.

'Winnie The Witch' transgresses all cultural boundaries. Amusingly, there have been attempts to deconstruct the meaning of the books - that Winnie represents society and Wilbur the disabled - but I think it's just a great story.

My goal for the #1000BlackGirlBooks campaign is to create systemic change across all school systems. I want there to be diverse books that reflect the lives of every person, regardless of whether or not they are in the majority.

My husband and I like to reminisce about how, when we were 9, we read straight through L. Frank Baum's 'Oz' series, books filled with wizards and witches. And you know what those subversive tales taught us? That we loved to read!

My father was sleepless most of his life. So by the age of five, I was awake with him all night long, watching bad television or we'd lie in the same bed, and I'd read my comic books while he read his latest spy or mystery novel.

Books are mute as far as sound is concerned. It follows that reading aloud is a combination of two distinct operations, of two 'languages.' It is something far more complex than speaking and reading taken separately by themselves.

What has always surprised me when I walk into a bookstore is the number of books that you can find that are written with certainty. The authors tell some story as though it's true, but they don't have any evidence that it is true!

I'm not sure Kinsey has changed in these first twelve books. I think the reader learns more about her, but from Kinsey's perspective, only three years have passed while the rest of us have been getting older at a much faster clip.

I've read plenty of amazing science pieces where the writers don't hang out in labs. I just have fun doing it. And I get rewarded for it; I get gushy, especially when kids tell me they expected to be bored by my books, but weren't.

Both of my books, 'Love Is a Mix Tape' and 'Talking to Girls About Duran Duran,' are about how music gets tangled up with all our other emotional memories. Since I'm an obsessive music fan, I'm always seeking out new sonic thrills.

'Ageism,' or whatever you want to call it, is a very English phenomenon. You don't get it too much in many other cultures. And no one says it about authors or poets or filmmakers. 'Oh, they're too old to make films or write books.'

Both my mum and dad were great readers, and we would go every Saturday morning to the library, and my sister and I had a library card when we could pass off something as a signature, and all of us would come with an armful of books.

My son was born during my last semester in college. His due date was Thanksgiving, but he didn't show up until finals week. I brought my books to the hospital and didn't think anything of it. That is what a father is supposed to do.

Certain personal issues forced me stay away from movies for a while but that does not mean I was idle and cut away from cinema. It was during that break that I wrote two books and found the time to dream about new scripts and plots.

Once you've published a few books, you drag around this ball and chain of a back list. All the evidence of how few you've sold is there. I think a lot of writers my age have this strange experience of going from would-be to has-been.

Climbing has so much more culture than all other activities put together. There is no culture in tennis, just a few names, a few dates. No big culture in soccer. But we have thousands of books, great philosophers, thinkers, painters.

There are still some people out there who believe comic books are nothing more than, well, comic books. But the true cognoscenti know graphic novels are - at their best - an amazing blend of art literature and the theater of the mind.

A lot of comic conventions go way beyond comic books and include other parts of pop culture, like celebrities and science fiction and movies and books. So I go to them either as a celebrity, or as a fan, because I'm a big sci-fi geek.

Hunted for sport by the rich, then driven from large tracts of its natural habitat by agricultural and housing development, the giant panda deserves better than to be scrubbed from conservation's ledger books through false accounting.

My mother has always encouraged me to do what I love. When I started being interested in fashion, she was very supportive, bringing me to see exhibits and buying me books. And when I started my company, she was right there to help me!

Heart is what drives us and determines our fate. That is what I need for my characters in my books: a passionate heart. I need mavericks, dissidents, adventurers, outsiders and rebels, who ask questions, bend the rules and take risks.

I want my books to last, to stand the test of time, and to do that I focus on the forces that shape the subject - the cultural and sociological geography - to capture them in a way that will explain them no matter what they are doing.

To be an artist, you don't have to compose music or paint or be in the movies or write books. It's just a way of living. It has to do with paying attention, remembering, filtering what you see and answering back, participating in life.

It's in the history books, the Holocaust. It's just a phrase. And the truth is it happened yesterday. It happened to my mother. I never met my grandmothers or my grandfathers. They were all wiped up in the gas chambers of Nazi Germany.

People always tell me I'm nothing like my character. Well, hopefully not! He's a character who's very defined. He was purposefully written by Jo Rowling as very one-dimensional in the first few books, because you're supposed to hate him.

The Twist was a guided missile launched from the ghetto into the heart of suburbia. The Twist succeeded, as politics, religion and law could never do, in writing in the heart and soul what the Supreme Court could only write on the books.

A well-designed home has to be very comfortable. I can't stand the aesthetes, the minimal thing. I can't live that way. My home has to be filled with stuff - mostly paintings, sculpture, my fish lamps, cardboard furniture, lots of books.

I used to write in school a lot; I always liked it and used to write on my own, comic books, come up with alternate story lines to the stuff I watched and read, a lot of books and TV, episodes of 'Twilight Zone.' I didn't think about it.

Faulkner is a writer who has had much to do with my soul, but Hemingway is the one who had the most to do with my craft - not simply for his books, but for his astounding knowledge of the aspect of craftsmanship in the science of writing.

In my work at 'Entertainment Weekly,' I had written reviews and news stories about YA books and film franchises and was always moved by how smart and voracious and loyal the readers were. Everything we did got lots of attention and reaction.

Very conscious of the fact that an effort was being made to destroy my mind, because I was deprived of books, deprived of any means of writing, deprived of human companionship. You never know how much you need it until you're deprived of it.

The Bible and several other self help or enlightenment books cite the Seven Deadly Sins. They are: pride, greed, lust, envy, wrath, sloth, and gluttony. That pretty much covers everything that we do, that is sinful... or fun for that matter.

I grew up in a modernist house, in a modernist culture. There was a love for modernism everywhere - the furniture, the books, the food, even the cutlery. So I learned very early to appreciate the value of design and the value of architecture.

I can't read all the books I want to read, I can't watch all the phenomena that interest me in the world. The work calls me, and sometimes I wonder whether this is an obsession and I should drop it, or it's a necessity I'm obliged to fulfill.

Do activities you're passionate about - which make your heart and soul feel perky - including things like working out, cooking, painting, writing, yoga, hiking, walking, swimming, being in nature, being around art, or reading inspiring books.

I started by just sitting by the chessboard exploring things. I didn't even have books at first, and I just played by myself. I learnt a lot from that, and I feel that it is a big reason why I now have a good intuitive understanding of chess.

For me, books were my source of affirmation. Alice Walker, Audrey Lord - it was these authors who wrote about their experiences. It was this weird thing where I was censored in terms of what I could watch but not in terms of what I could read.

Interestingly, although the 'Books of Blood' were greeted with cries of righteous horror - and smirks - I didn't think of them as being particularly excessive. God knows what I did think was excessive at the time, but I didn't think they were.

Some books claim I have already clocked up a century of Grands Prix, but let me put the record straight. Australia will be my 100th start, and I aim to mark the milestone with a cracking performance. It could even be celebrated with a victory.

Nobody wants to read about the honest lawyer down the street who does real estate loans and wills. If you want to sell books, you have to write about the interesting lawyers - the guys who steal all the money and take off. That's the fun stuff.

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