Pastoral Resources

I have said repeatedly that in this country we track library books better than we do sex offenders.

Without books I would not have become a vivacious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer.

Thrillers have been traditionally very masculine books; the women characters often rather decorative.

In my books, women often solve the problem. Even if the woman is not the hero, she's a strong character. She does change the plot. She'll often rescue the male character from some situation.

Getting close to books, and spending time by myself, I was obliged to think about things I would never have thought about if I was busy romping around with a brother and sister.

Most of my inspiration, if that's the word, came from books themselves.

Books are like a mirror. If an ass looks in, you can't expect an angel to look out.

Books are only the shadow and life the real thing. I believe this as strongly as any belief I hold.

I teethed on books of heroes such as Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln and King David.

I have personally seen statements that were longer than some books I have read.

When I die there may be a paragraph or two in the newspapers. My name will linger in the British Museum Reading Room catalogue for a space at the head of a long list of books for which no one will ever ask.

At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.

The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

Few are sufficiently sensible of the importance of that economy in reading which selects, almost exclusively, the very first order of books. Why, except for some special reason, read an inferior book, at the very time you might be reading one of the highest order?

For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men lived and worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.

I'm the biggest nerd - I love comic books and stuff like that! I don't have any friends who are actresses. I only had one girlfriend when I was growing up. Most of my friends were boys. I was such a tomboy. I enjoyed doing guy things.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have left me.

History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.

I wrote two plotted books, got some of the fundamentals of storytelling down, then... it's sort of like taking the training wheels off, trying to write a book that's fun in the same way without relying on quite such mechanical or external beats.