Edith Pearlman Quotes

The Chicago Way is a wonderful first novel. Michael Harvey has studied the masters and put his own unique touch on the crime novel. This book harkens the arrival of a major new voice.

I had thought for years, probably 30 or 40 years, that it would be a lot of fun to try my hand at a classic English mystery novel... I love that form very much because the reader is so familiar with all of the types of characters that are in there that they already identify with the book.

The book I always say that influenced me, subconsciously, because at the time I didn't know I wanted to be a writer, was William Goldman's 'Marathon Man.' That was the first adult thriller that I loved. I read it when I was 15 or so, when my father gave it to me.

Even in a manuscript form, 'The Girl on the Train' sort of leapt off the pages as a contemporary suspense drama-slash-thriller. It has all the mechanics of a thriller, but at the heart of it was a great character study.

I'm not a fan of mysteries, so to prepare for this experience of writing a mystery I started reading the most successful ones in the market in 2012. And I realized I cannot write that kind of book. It's too gruesome, too violent, too dark; there's no redemption there.

Top-shelf fiction, a Crown Royal ride into the heart of Night and New York. Con Lehane's work is reminiscent of the best of Lawrence Block, which is to say that this is very good stuff, indeed.

Has all the trappings of a mystery novel, doesn't it?

I admit," I said, "that a second murder in a book often cheers things up." - Hastings

I love to lose myself in other men's minds.... Books think for me.

If you enjoy books with happy endings than you are better off reading some other book.

I had very low self-esteem. Books saved me. I found friends in stories like The Chronicles of Narnia and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. During lunch hour at school I'd avoid social interactions by sitting on the bathroom sink and reading. My mother worked in my school cafeteria. When my anxiety got really bad, I'd put a coat on, grab my book and a flashlight, and hide in the freezer with the mac and cheese.

No man reads a book of science from pure inclination. The books that we do read with pleasure are light compositions, which contain a quick succession of events.

In New York I'd go to the movies three or four times a week. Here I've upped it to six or seven, mainly because I'm too lazy to do anything else. Fortunately, going to the movies seems to suddenly qualify as an intellectual accomplishment, on a par with reading a book or devoting time to serious thought. It's not that the movies have gotten any more strenuous, it's just that a lot of people are as lazy as I am, and together we've agreed to lower the bar.

Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution - such call I good books.

Books. I'd probably spend all my time alone and lost in books if I could. It's easier that way.

Books are for those without real lives, he thought. And they are no real replacement.

One can only snort so many ants and have so much sex before one starts to long for the comfort and companionship of a good book.

Adverbs is a book about love, and I thought that was pretty cheerful, but people who are reading it now are telling me that it's actually quite dark.

Books are my friends, my companions. They make me laugh and cry and find meaning in life.

A little known fact: I read all the time. books were the one thing that got me out of Gatlin, even if it was only for a little while.

Bangkok 8 is one of the most startling and provocative mysteries that I've read in years. The characters are marvelously unique, the setting is intoxicating and the plot unwinds in dark illusory strands, reminiscent of Gorky Park. Once I started, I didn't want to put it down.

When I was growing up, books took me away from my life to a solitary place that didn't feel lonely. They celebrated the outcasts, people who sat on the margins of society contemplating their interiors. . . Books were my cure for a romanticized unhappiness, for the anxiety of impending adulthood. They were all mine, private islands with secret passwords only the worthy could utter.

I didn't have much to say to anybody but kept to myself and my books. With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw it's fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy.

A well-chosen book saves you from everything, including yourself.

I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.