Book Research Quotes

'The Fifth Gospel' is set entirely inside the Vatican and told from the perspective of a Catholic priest. I'm not Catholic myself, yet authenticity and factual accuracy are very important to me, so the novel required an enormous amount of research.

One of the maddening ironies of writing books is that it leaves so little time for reading others'. My bedside is piled with books, but it's duty reading: books for book research, books for review. The ones I pine for are off on a shelf downstairs.

What drove me to do 'Dead Wake' was that after doing the most preliminary of reading and scoping out what kinds of materials might be available in archives and so forth, I realized that this book - the research, the writing - would present me with a rare opportunity to explore to a full extent the potential for suspense in a nonfiction work.

In the prepping for 'Azkaban,' I read 'Azkaban' and 'Goblet of Fire.'

Literally thousands of e-mails over the course of a book go out to people I've never met, people who might end up being the focus of a chapter.

I'm always working on a few different stories at once, so there's always some really big coffee table book I'm carrying around.

In February of this year I returned to China to research my next book. The authorities know about the novels of mine that have been published in the west, including the latest one, Beijing Coma, about a student shot in Tiananmen Square, but so far have allowed me to return.

When I was first diagnosed, I went out, as a book person, and got some books on cancer and looked up my version of the disease. It said that I had about a 5 percent chance of survival. I said, 'Gosh, well, it's been a good run.' What I didn't realize is that in the two years since those books were published, things had shifted dramatically.

I like to do books in which a lot of the research and the writing and the thinking revolves around something American.

It takes me three or four years to research and write each book and the individual stories stay with you for a long time afterwards.

Like most writers, I read deeply into the genre in which I write.

I spend about eight months researching and outlining my book.

I do research for every single book, regardless. For 'Double Dutch,' I learned to jump and learned the scoring system. For 'November Blues,' I interviewed pregnant teens. I like to get up close and personal with the kids involved in the situations I write about.

I really enjoy going to a library and spending the day doing research - to me that is the most pleasurable part of writing the science book.

Many readers share their stories with me and if one speaks to me (or if the same theme keeps coming at me), I will research it and decide if it would make a good book. But, straight down to it, people inspire me.

When I'm working on historical books, I'm much more organized. I usually read about 100 books to get the depth of knowledge I need.

Time spent researching varies from book to book. Some novels require months, even years of research, others very little. I try to do most of my research before I begin but inevitably questions emerge during the writing.

I was very anxious when I was writing 'Oscar And Lucinda.' I would take other books off the shelf to check my chapter length was OK.

While researching the book, I used the Freedom of Information Act to request what the military calls Individual Deceased Personnel Files for all the Gremlin Special's passengers and crew.

All my books take a long time to research. I spend several months researching before I start writing, and in the middle of writing I often have to stop and look up stuff. At my local library, I am one of the best customers! The research takes several months.

In general, librarians enjoyed special requests. A reference librarian is someone who likes the chase. When librarians read for pleasure, they often pick a good mystery.

The Thames Torso murders almost fell into my lap. After deciding to use a real historical crime as the focus for the book, I went to Google and searched for unsolved murders in Victorian London, and they basically popped out at me about halfway down the first results page.

I am a member of the London Library, and on almost every single job I do, there is some benefit to be had in going there and pulling two or three books off the shelves.

We pore through libraries, dissecting the classics" Henry Sturges- vampire

Honest to God, I do all the research on these books myself.