- Nov 07, 2020
Book Quotes
Why books work the way they do.
This page highlights what books can do that film can't, including slower pacing and quiet stretches, alongside a reminder that some things simply translate poorly to screen. For a companion collection, see Books.
- Last Updated on May 30, 2021
- Nov 07, 2020
Whatever's good about your book should be good on page 1, or very few editors are going to get to page 2.
- Past
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- Nov 07, 2020
Every book that doesn't first have to get past a gatekeeper or two, or 10, before being put in front of the public will be worse.
- Mind
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- Nov 07, 2020
Usually, a number of events will be going on around me to start me on a book. What I mean is, I will have read a poem or seen a picture that is lingering in my mind.
- New
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- Nov 07, 2020
Somewhere in this process, I begin reading and showing my book to my audience. When I say my audience, I mean a single imaginary child who is a blend of myself as a young person, the students in my wife's classroom of first- through third-graders, and the students from two classrooms I visit regularly in the Bronx, New York.
- Matter
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- Nov 07, 2020
With any book, I try to find where the manner of the making of the book is appropriate to the matter of the subject.
- Music
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- Nov 07, 2020
When I present the Charlie Parker book, I do a call and response that works quite well. With the Thelonious Monk book, I play the music and work with kids in a group to create a color wheel and show how the wheel can be mapped on a 12-tone chromatic scale.
- Place
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- Nov 07, 2020
When I was at Marvel, they were in bankruptcy, which is hard to believe now with 'Avengers 2' out, but it was during the 1990s. It was a troubled place. Comic book sales were dropping. Work was scattered.
- Be Careful
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- Nov 07, 2020
You have to be careful not to use anything too colloquial or you date the book.
- Censored
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- Nov 07, 2020
My first book, 'Running Loose', was censored back in 1983 or '84. Every book I've written since has been censored somewhere.
- Better
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- Nov 07, 2020
Sometimes a book is better than it ever had a right to be because of the history the reader brings to the reading and because of the methods educators use to bring a particular story alive.
- Discipline
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- Nov 07, 2020
In 2004, one of my books, 'Whale Talk,' was chosen as an all-school read in Fowlerville, Michigan, a rural town not far from Detroit. They had done what I thought was a brilliant and innovative thing: decided to teach the book in every discipline, sophomores through seniors.
- Know
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- Nov 07, 2020
I think a book that is over 400 pages should be split in two. I don't know that there's anything that interesting that can go on for 700 pages. I think that is a little bit indulgent.
- Like
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- Nov 07, 2020
I wouldn't buy a book simply because I like the cover. I would pick it up. The jacket can call your attention to it. But in that sense, Oprah Winfrey is worth all the jackets in the world. A jacket is basically trying to do what she does all on her own.
- Crammed
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- Nov 07, 2020
I think too many comic book covers are way too busy, crammed with far too much information, both visual and verbal, that just becomes a dull noise.
- Know
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- Nov 07, 2020
I didn't know anything about '12 Years a Slave.' Not the book, not Solomon Northup, which I was quite shocked by, once I'd read it, that it wasn't a seminal text. I think it deserves to be.
- Mom
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- Nov 07, 2020