David James Duncan Quotes

When a young reader tells you that they'd never finished a book outside of school until they read yours, or that they really needed to hear something that one of your characters says or thinks... that's just rewarding and humbling.

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 always write authors after I read their books. I've been doing it for years. I write a formal letter and send it to them in care of their agent. My mother always taught us to write thank you notes, and if an author puts themselves out there, they like to hear that their book connected with someone.

When I was growing up, a lot of books affected me, but I never wrote letters to the author or anything like that. I'm always mindful that there are probably a whole bunch of people reading my books like that, too.

I like that you can open up any one of my books anywhere and immediately be lost. I just love them so much.

One of the most famous lines in contemporary Russian poetry is "Erica makes four copies and that's enough." That's the ethos we're aiming for. This is not to say I don't want lots of people to read my book, I do. I especially want people to read it who will feel better, and safer, or at least understood.

Nikki Giovanni! I got a book of hers from the library, and there was this woman who could paint me on paper with words - my whole little experience. I thought it was wonderful.

The better the book the more room for the reader.

I would hope that people, no matter what age, would find something to identify with in my books, pick one up and experience a personal sense of discovery. That's great. But for them, not for me.

My favorite books have a personality and complexion as distinctly drawn as if the author's portrait were framed into the paragraphs and smiled upon me as I read his illustrated pages.

I am eternally grateful for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on.

It is always hardest for me to write a book that has kids in it close to my kids' ages. It is always hardest for me to write a book that has kids in it close to my kids' ages.

The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read a book over I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one.

Write," he said. "I'll write to you as soon as I get there," answered Julian. "No. Not to me. Write books. Not letters. Write them for me, for Penelope.

I have trouble with some books because I'm so much in agreement with them I'd rather just sit in the grass myself.

When a reader falls in love with a book, it leaves its essence inside him, like radioactive fallout in an arable field, and after that there are certain crops that will no longer grow in him, while other, stranger, more fantastic growths may occasionally be produced.

The child lives in the book; but just as much the book lives in the child.

There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.

I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I'd written.

A book is meant not only to be read, but to haunt you, to importune you like a lover or a parent, to be in your teeth like a piece of gristle.

Each of us has a private Austen.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.

The Catcher in the Rye had such a deep impact on me, because it felt like it was just Holden and me. I didn't feel like any other person had read that book. It felt like my secret. Writing that I identify with feels like it's just me and the writer. So I hope that whoever is reading what I do feels like that.

Steve MCQueen created an entire family to tell one man's tale and I am delighted that so many of this family have also been recognised today. I am hugely grateful to the Academy for this great honour, and, of course, to Solomon Northup for sharing his story through his breathtaking book.

One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?