Nina Jacobson Quotes

Reading a hard copy book, and reading a book on an iPad are slightly different experiences. What they both have in common though is that you must engage your imagination in the process.

I think of novels as houses. You live in them over the course of a long period, both as a reader and as a writer.

When a book is alive, really alive, you feel it. You put it to your ear here, and you feel it breathe, sometimes laugh, sometimes cry, just like a person, a little person.

If you like to read, sometimes it's interesting just to go and see what the reality is, of the word, of the seedy or not so seedy fiction writer, the drunk or sober poet... Sometimes you can go looking for illumination.

In a book, you can kind of take time and have lulls in places.

Writing a book is an adventure.

Writing a novel is a lot like reading one.

Books could be an incredible adventure. I stayed under my blanket and barely moved, and no one would have guessed how my mind raced and my heart soared with stories.

In a book, you can create a world in your imagination that's as intricate as you want. Even something like 'Angels & Demons.' I was reading it, thinking, 'This is incredible! This is so scary!'

What you look for as a reader is somebody who is going to take you and say, 'C'mon. Come into the story. I'm going to show you what there is to see.' The guide who is going to tell you, 'Pay attention over there,' or, 'Do you remember that other thing? Now watch!'

I see the world as voices, as colors, as it were. From book to book, I change, the subjects change, but the narrative thread remains the same.

Writing, when it works, one needs to access whatever it is that creates dreams.

Every book is its own experience, the writing of it.

I feel like 'Amelie' is very much an extension of me. She's a contemporary woman who sees the world through her imagination.

I do not believe that with a fictional character you can force yourself too far away from yourself. There has to be some of you in it.

Kendrick Lamar taught me that life experience is an important part of being a good illustrator. When you're illustrating a story, you have to go based off of your personal experiences.

The best feeling you can ever have when you're working on a show is that the characters are still inside you, and they have a lot left to do.

A novel, at least for me, cannot be visualized at one time.

I get transported when I read books.

We read in bed because reading is halfway between life and dreaming, our own consciousness in someone else's mind.

I think whatever is going on with my brain, I'm very, very - and I'm not saying this as a positive thing, it's just a fact - I'm very creative. I have a very strong imagination, and have since I was a little kid. That is where a lot of my world comes from. It's like I'm off somewhere else. And I can have a problem in life because of that, because I'm always off in some other world thinking about something else. It's constant.

The formula for creative writing in high school or college is write what you know. And I said they don't know nothing. Imagine something. Do you know what it's like to be a Madame in Paris, when you're too old to have any clients. No, you don't. I don't either. Write about it.

Writing will be like a journey, every word a footstep that takes me further into undiscovered land.

It's like when you read a book and you know that the words are important, but the images blossoming in your imagination are even more important because it's your mind that allows the words to come to life.

I talk to myself on paper about my characters - sometimes writing in first person... I keep lists of unanswered questions that I can always turn to in order to get myself going.