literary choices Quotes

It is astonishing how many books I find there is no need for me to read at all.

If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.

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.

The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.

I like commas. I detest semi-colons - I don't think they belong in a story. And I gave up quotation marks long ago. I found I didn't need them, they were fly-specks on the page.

I do feel that the boys are getting left out. Girls will read boys' books, but boys won't read girls' books. If you're writing for a girl, you've got most of the audience on your side anyway.

What better way to get to know someone than through her choice and treatment of books?

What's my favourite book? It changes all the time.

I'm wondering what to read next.

I don't know why one author writes westerns while another writes detective novels. You don't know why. You go where the intensity is. I feel most comfortable writing about monsters. It's possible that I feel like a monster myself. Or maybe it's because we all have a monster inside of us, a vampire, a ghost, a witch or a werewolf. You do it because it works and it feels really right and authentic.

I like being able to provide consistent and frequent literary choices for my fans.

I lay off a lot modern fiction and only rely on living writers for non-fiction work.

I am so constituted that I had rather read bad stuff than nothing.

I don't do a lot of foisting, because when it comes to books I don't really like to be foisted upon.