favorite authors Quotes

I'm a huge fan of anything Ed Brubaker does. A lot of his 'Daredevil' stuff. A lot of his creator-owned stuff, too. His 'Criminal stuff,' I'm really into.

The writers I care about most and never grow tired of are: Shakespeare, Swift, Fielding, Dickens, Charles Reade, Flaubert and, among modern writers, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. But I believe the modern writer who has influenced me most is Somerset Maugham, whom I admire immensely for his power of telling a story straightforwardly and without frills.

I read a lot. I liked a tremendous number of poets and writers. The person whose work I liked the most was Joyce.

I love Chris Crutcher, Sara Zarr, Lois Lowry, Elizabeth Scott, Madeleine L'Engle, Gordon Korman, Michelle Magorian, Heather Bouwman.

I'm not a big Austen reader. I wouldn't say I dislike her, but if I had to choose between her and Eliot to bring to a desert island, it would definitely be Eliot.

I read a lot when I was at college, but really, only a few of Dickens's books work for me.

I suppose if I was to have to pick a few, Ursula LeGuin would have to top the list. It was while reading her work that I decided I wanted to be an author.

As the years pass, I find that writers who were once central to me aren't anymore. I revered Yeats's poetry in college. I respect it now and am still ravished by certain lines, but I don't go back to him again and again. I do go back to Emily Dickinson again and again.

In non-fiction, I like Wayne Dyer. I have a compilation of his best quotes near my bed! To me he's one of the finest authors.

Donald Westlake's Parker novels are among the small number of books I read over and over. Forget all that crap you've been telling yourself about War and Peace and Proust-these are the books you'll want on that desert island.

I loved Frances Hodgson Burnett, who wrote 'The Little Princess' and 'The Secret Garden.' And I loved the 'Little House on the Prairie' books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

I still think about the writers I loved when I was a kid.

I really like Greg Rucka's work. I loved 'Lazarus,' and I loved 'Stumptown.'

The summer I got to Pittsburgh for graduate school, I house-sat for a Ph.D. student who had a lot of books. One of the books that I found was 'Lolita' by Vladimir Nabokov. That was eye opening. I've probably read it every other year since my 20s.

Some writers you return to again and again, and for me, Nancy Mitford is one of them.

I really began to love to read while in high school, and my favorite authors were my heroes: J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut.

I love Joyce Carol Oates. I love Margaret Atwood, T.C. Boyle. Arthur Phillips is always consistent.

Novels by British writers are among my favorites because our family has enjoyed travel in England and because they are written with an economy of words as if they were written with a pen instead of a computer. Penelope Fitzgerald is a favorite.

You tell me your favorite novelists and I'll tell you whom you vote for, or whether you vote at all.

I wasn't a big science-fiction fan growing up. But I loved Jules Verne and Sherlock Holmes. Both came into play on 'The X-Files.'

I'm a huge fan of Alice Hoffman, Fred Chappell and Susan Elizabeth Phillips.

I've always liked authors such as Philip K. Dick and Ray Bradbury.

I have favorite authors from a lifetime of reading, so there are some I'll automatically read every time they have a new novel. Included in them: Robert Goddard, Jeffery Deaver, Sophie Kinsella, Katherine Neville, Greg Isle, Laurie King, Lee Child, Lisa Tucker, Susan Howatch, Paul Auster. Barry Eisler, David Hewson, Tracy Chevalier.

My favorite short stories are by Alice Munro, especially her collections 'Carried Away' and 'Runaway.'

If asked to list my ten favorite American fiction writers, Gail Godwin would be among them. In this, her latest . . . she evokes in a short book the long married life of two artists. Evenings at Five is a strong tale of love-after-death.