Raphael Bob-Waksberg Quotes

I loved 'Belzhar' by Meg Wolitzer.

I loved Alessandra Torre's 'Black Lies.'

'Midnight Nation' is really interesting.

The real difference between literature and pulp is the kind of emotional responses they elicit. Dan Brown can't pierce your heart. Patricia Cornwell can't make you read a sentence twice and then look sightlessly out of the window.

I found 'The Twin' sitting on a coffee table at a writers' colony in 2009. It carried praise from J.M. Coetzee. That seemed ample justification for using it to avoid my own writing. I finished it - weeping - a day later, and I've been puzzling over its powerful hold on me ever since.

'The Five People You Meet in Heaven' by Mitch Albom - I read it in eight hours and blubbed my eyes out when it finished. I've thought about the story every day since.

There was a Ta-Nehisi Coates book called 'Between the World and Me' that I read the prologue, and I was so decimated by it that I couldn't even get through the rest of the book.

I don't remember how I picked up 'Different Seasons,' but it was a book I read on a grave shift. I was absolutely floored by it; 'The Body,' a story about kids who go searching for a corpse in the woods, impacted me especially.

I remember reading 'The Guest' and thinking, 'This is going to be something!'

I've waited for a novel from Charles Yu with eager anticipation since being bowled over by his 2006 short story collection, 'Third Class Superhero.'

Longest book was '2666' by Roberto Bolano, and it was an irregular reading experience. I read the first four parts during a cross-country plane trip, reading at slightly slower-than-usual speed but surprised at how accessible the book was compared with 'The Savage Detectives.'

I have this very moment finished reading a novel called The Vicar of Wakefield [by Oliver Goldsmith].... It appears to me, to be impossible any person could read this book through with a dry eye and yet, I don't much like it.... There is but very little story, the plot is thin, the incidents very rare, the sentiments uncommon, the vicar is contented, humble, pious, virtuous--but upon the whole the book has not at all satisfied my expectations.

Generally my favorite remarks always come from my readers. I've had people say my books made them laugh, or cry, or that it frightened them late at night.

The book that made me cry hardest was 'Stoner,' by John Williams.

Books have shown me horror and beauty.

The most rewarding experience as a musician is to know that I moved people personally.

When I read Daniel Woodrell's novel 'Winter's Bone,' I was drawn to the characters, the setting, and the sound of the dialog.

I read 'Twilight' when I was overseas. I actually liked it. I didn't expect to, because I generally don't like fantasy like that because it's far-fetched, but I liked it. It's pretty good.

I would love for there to be a 'Voodoo Dreams' movie, especially after seeing the glorious 'Beasts of the Southern Wild.' I so admired how the filmmakers captured Louisiana and the magical atmosphere. I cried.

Initially, it would bother me when filmmakers, script writers, dialogue writers and choreographers tried to recreate a bit of my dad though me.

The intensity of 'Arjun Reddy' was too much for me.

A postcolonial writer who has often been credited with mixing the mundane with the magical, and history with fiction, is Salman Rushdie.

I found Leonora Carrington's 'The Hearing Trumpet' really funny.

I'm reading 'Ten Storey Love Song' by Richard Milward. I read his first novel, 'Apples,' after hearing a reading of his in the Hague. I really enjoyed it, so I've started this one.

Reading 'Search Sweet Country' is like reading a dream, and indeed, at times, it feels like the magical landscapes of writers like the Nigerian Ben Okri or the Mozambican Mia Couto.