Richard Donner Quotes

I think I get some of my love of adult books that can be fun from Douglas Adams.

I've loved thrillers and spy stories since I was a kid. It's probably not a bad rule of thumb to write the kinds of stories you love to read.

I never really saw myself as writing science fiction anyway.

I like reading a lot. Jeffrey Archer and Robert Ludlum are my favourite authors. I love making realistic cinema, so I read non-fiction more.

I get asked to read new works a lot, in the hope that I will give a quotation and I will only give a 'puff' for a book I truly love.

I love Martin Amis.

When I started 'First Blood,' back in 1968, I was deeply influenced by Geoffrey Household's 'Rogue Male.'

There are things I read doing research, and there are certain books and writers I just love to read. There are books of Brian Morten's that I love, for instance. There's a wonderful book by an Australian writer named Helen Garner called 'The Children's Bach,' and I just love the way she uses language in it.

I respond to authenticity and originality, and I've been a fan of Don Winslow's ever since 'The Power Of The Dog.'

I have an editor in my head, that's why I can't read Harry Potter, because Rowling is such a lousy writer.

I have, for a very long time, been a huge admirer of Marilynne Robinson, whose work I just love.

I love 'To Kill A Mockingbird' - it seems to offer up new layers every time you read it. I also love Kate Atkinson's 'Behind The Scenes At The Museum' - that's the book that started me writing.

I love Dickens. I love the way he sets a scene.

I know that by the time I was in middle school, Andre Norton was definitely my favorite author.

I love Chekhov. I could go on all day about him.

I love Toni Morrison and Jeanette Winterson. 'The Passion' is my favourite book.

I've always liked authors such as Philip K. Dick and Ray Bradbury.

I read a bit of Ray Bradbury when I was a younger man. I don't read a lot of fiction anymore... like, none.

When I was writing 'House Of Suns,' there were a few writers I had in mind as role models, the main being Gene Wolfe.

Most people know that Ray Bradbury is one of my favorite authors.

I made Lost World in September of '91, and by the end of that year, I was living in Toronto.

So a lot of what you see in the Baroque Cycle is me wanting to be one of those guys. In the case of Anathem, I needed something that was more formal, less flashy, as if it had been translated from the classical language of another planet, but enlivened with slang terms that a teenage narrator would enjoy throwing around.

There are many other writers whose work I admire tremendously, but none whose work struck me at just the right young age. Jack Vance taught me that speculative fiction, science fiction, could be wonderfully and liberatingly stylistic. It didn't have to be pulp stuff. He really changed my writing and my view of science fiction, so if nothing else, my little homage to him in the novelette I wrote for that anthology is my thank-you to him. He helped me see that any genre can have excellent writing in it.

When I receive a new novel from a hopeful publisher - "hoping that I like the book as much as he does" - I check first of all how much dialog there is, and if it looks too abundant or too sustained, I shut the book with a bang.

I'm a poetry-skipper myself. I don't like to boast, but I have probably skipped more poetry than any other person of my age and weight in this country - make it any other two persons. This doesn't mean that I hate poetry. I don't feel that strongly about it. It only means that those who wish to communicate with me by means of the written word must do so in prose.