Jane Green Quotes

I am always consulted about covers, and give feedback, but I am also aware that what causes a customer to pick a book up off a shelf in the UK is very different from what causes a customer to pick a book up in the US.

All writers know how important a good title is. It's the first thing readers see, along with a knock-your-socks-off cover - a seductive 'come hither' for the story within.

Alejandro Colucci has designed covers for my books that stand out, that catch the eye, and that make me, as a reader and consumer, want to know more about the books behind those covers.

I steer clear of books with ugly covers. And ones that are touted as 'sweeping,' 'tender' or 'universal.'

I have a strong say in how my books are marketed, and the covers - I am very firm that I don't want pink and fluffy, or stick figures sitting drinking cocktails. That's simply not appealing to me.

I hate to see great works of literature ghettoized, whereas others that conform to the rules, conventions, and procedures of the genre we call literary fiction get accorded greater esteem and privilege. I also have a problem with how books are marketed, with certain cover designs and typefaces. They're often stamped with an identity that has nothing to do with their effect on the reader.

I don't love reading so much, but I love book shopping. It's just because I don't have much time.

Covers matter. In my experience, a different cover can make you think you're reading an entirely different book.

The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers. What does our Concord culture amount to? There is in this town, with a very few exceptions, no taste for the best or for very good books even in English literature, whose words all can read and spell.

Readers of novels are a strange folk, upon whose probable or even possible tastes no wise book-maker would ever venture to bet.

Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books, one does not discover how bad the majority of them are.

There's no such thing as a kid who hates reading. There are kids who love reading, and kids who are reading the wrong books.

There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag...

Much depends upon when and where you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the Faerie Queen for a stopgap, or a volume of Bishop Andrews's Sermons?

I read books I hate all the time, and I don't mention them or talk about them.

Since the choice of what we curl up with is often crucial for our solace and sanity, we need to learn how to nurture the talent of selection. Book browsing is a meditative art...Books are as essential as breathing.

We ought to regard books as we do sweetmeats, not wholly to aim at the pleasantest, but chiefly to respect the wholesomest; not forbidding either, but approving the latter most.

Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.

Life is too short for reading inferior books.

I used to do jacket design, and I'm very conscious of covers, and probably meddle more than other authors would.

I thought I was writing for a fairly hip, intelligent crowd; I just thought there were more of them out there. But they're not. They're not out there waiting. They're not gonna use their intelligence on your book.

The three practical rules, then, which I have to offer, are, --/ Never read a book that is not a year old./ Never read any but the famed books./ Never read any but what you like.

I'm never quite sure what I'm looking for in a comic book! It just jumps off the page somehow and hits you square between the eyeballs and you know that's the artist for the story.

It is no more expected of most producers to read a book than it is, say, of Ted Williams to dust off home plate.

It's weird - sort of not terribly wise - to take a book that was successful and then change its cover.