Pastoral Resources

With a few flowers in my garden, half a dozen pictures and some books, I live without envy.

That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.

Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.

I read numerous books - loads in fact - and, as I always do when recording a historical project, immersed myself into the subject matter. I spent many hours at Henry's old homes, such as Hampton Court, and visiting the Tower of London. I read no other books during that period.

One, I have a wonderful publisher, Black Sparrow Press; as long as they exist, they will keep me in print. And they claim they sell very respectable numbers of my books, so I guess, and it's true, every place I go, my books are in libraries and on bookshelves.

I'm calling my book series the 'with God series.' And this next 'with God' book is Friendship with God, which comes out in November. This books challenges us to bring about the end of 'better' on this planet.

The new spirituality will bring about what I'm calling the 'end of better.' And that is in fact what is called for in the next of the series of books that I've been writing.

A harsh reality of newspaper editing is that the deadlines don't allow for the polish that you expect in books or even magazines.

The other thing is this industry has decided it only has one market. Unlike any other industry in the world, unlike film or books or sports even, this industry has decided it has only one market and that's 14 year old boys.

I enjoy adapting my own work, or anybody's work. I like to adapt books.

I think the kind of unexpected I really love is when you open books and the actual way of writing is different and interesting. Like reading Virginia Woolf for the first time or Lawrence Durrell for the first time.

But a girl of seventeen is not always thinking of books, especially in the Oxford summer term.

A life spent largely among books, and in the exercise of a literary profession, has very obvious drawbacks, as a subject-matter, when one comes to write about it.

Mostly, I was only interested in television as a kid, and the majority of reading material I collected was an adjunct to that central concern, comic books and magazines included.

I always used to look at books and wonder how anybody could come up with so many words. But my divorce and then falling in love with somebody else has released in me an ability to write in other ways apart from songs.

I grew up without a television. It meant that I read lots of books and entertained myself.

I find myself gravitating towards drama. It interests me. In the books I read, the paintings I like, it's always the darker stuff.