Rick Riordan Quotes

Seeing someone reading something I wrote on an airplane - things like that are pretty awesome.

Best-sellerism is the star system of the book world. A "best seller" is a celebrity among books. It is a book known primarily (sometimes exclusively) for its well-knownness.

It is always sort of unnerving to hear from people who've read my books. I'm not reading any of the reviews and most of my friends haven't read it - they bought it, which is all I frankly care about, but they haven't read it.

Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books are read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs? I do hope so.

You almost have to be a rock star to generate the kind of fever you need to survive in American politics.

My dad read The Hobbit to me originally when I was young. So, it was the first imaginary landscape I ever had in my head from the written word. It gave me a passion for reading, thanks to my dad's performance of the book.

Well, it's my age group, anywhere from, I'd say 30 to 70. The biggest comment I get about the book is how honest it is and that people can relate to my circumstances going across the line. Anybody could learn and deal with this book from reading it.

I'm not a 'celebrity'. I'm not a big huge star and so when people see me it's usually to talk about something I've done and that's a great conversation to have.

I never wanted to be famous and the only part I like is that it means people are reading my books and listening to me on TV and radio.

I had an idea for a medical conspiracy thriller. Since it was non-horror, I didn't want the publishers and editors bringing a lot of baggage - my history as a genre writer in the SF and horror fields, for instance - to the novel when they read it. I wanted them to consider the book solely on its own merits. So I called myself Colin Andrews. I was tired of seeing my books at floor level. Not that Herman Wouk and Phyllis Whitney and William Wharton are bad company, but I wanted to be up at eye level for a change, where people with bad backs could get a chance to see my books.

Few things linger longer or become more indwelling than that feeling of both completion and emptiness when a great book ends. That the book accompanies the reader forever from that day forward is part of literature's profligate generosity.

You asked if I thought my fiction had changed anything in the culture and the answer is no. Sure, there's been some scandal, but people are scandalized all the time; it's a way of life for them. It doesn't mean a thing. If you ask if I want my fiction to change anything in the culture, the answer is still no. What I want is to possess my readers while they are reading my book — if I can, to possess them in ways that other writers don't. Then let them return, just as they were, to a world where everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt, and control them.

What's a book? Everything or nothing. The eye that sees it all.

I personally have no interest in being a star or a celebrity. I want my stand-up comedy and how I think as a comedian to be recognized and successful.

I think people think I'm accessible. I'm never treated as a star, either by fans or other actors, and I like it like that. I don't get the star treatment. I think that means I'm a good actor. They acknowledge me as a human being, and to me, that's invalua.

If the book is good, is about something that you know, and is truly written, and reading it over you see that this is so, you can let the boys yip and the noise will have that pleasant sound coyotes make on a very cold night when they are out in the snow and you are in your own cabin that you have built or paid for with your work.

There are books that I read years ago that enlivened things in me that haven't died yet.

It is remarkable, but on the whole, perhaps, not to be lamented, that the world is so unkind to a new book. Any distinguished traveler who comes to our shores is likely to get more dinners and speeches of welcome than he can well dispose of, but the best books, if noticed at all, meet with coldness and suspicion, or, what is worse, gratuitous, off-hand criticism.

As soon as you publish a book and the reader reads it, they're making an extension of your brain with their brain.

Many readers judge of the power of a book by the shock it gives their feelings.

I'm finding that people reading the book [The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star] are saying, "You came from one background, I came from this background - you were a rock star, I was a CEO. I didn't have a heroin/coke problem, but I had a pill problem. But I also fell from grace, didn't know how to get recovery, and I am now in recovery." People tell me that their kids read it and told them they'll never do drugs - "This book really shows me where it goes."

I love getting fan mail. Often, as a writer, you never know what your readers think of a book... you get critical reviews and sales figures, but none of that is the same as knowing you've made a person stay up all night reading, or helped them have a good cry, or really touched their life.

I think all good actors are personalities. If they're not, they're not stars. What makes you a star is horsepower.

That book taught me that by reading, I could live more intensely. It could give me back the sight I had lost. For that reason alone, a book that didn't matter to anyone changed my life.

When Ava Gardner get in a taxi, the driver knows at once she’s Ava Gardner. It’s the same for Lana Turner or Elizabeth Taylor, but not for me. I’m never Grace Kelly, I’m always someone who looks like Grace Kelly.