Book Identity Quotes

When a translation is very good, it is fascinating to see how the book changes and yet stays the same. I think 'Out Stealing Horses' sounds more American for Americans than it does in Norway, and still, it is all there, everything that I wrote. It's amazing.

I don't think that children, if left to themselves, feel that there is an author behind a book, a somebody who wrote it. Grown-ups have fostered this quotient of identity, particularly teachers. Write a letter to your favorite author and so forth. When I was a child I never realized that there were authors behind books. Books were there as living things, with identities of their own.

Each book should be an entity unto itself, with its own structure, character, life, name.

I didn't like being a name attached to a book.

Each book tends to have its own identity rather than the author's. It speaks from itself rather than you. Each book is unlike the others because you are not bringing the same voice to every book. I think that keeps you alive as a writer.

It's weird - sort of not terribly wise - to take a book that was successful and then change its cover.

I try not to think about the trope or whether or not my books are like 'Fifty' or 'Crossfire' or any other series.

A book is a book is a book.

I think the most important lesson isn't necessarily to try and write a different book every time, or to try and brand yourself and write one specific kind of book, but to write the kind of books you love to read.

Why wouldn't - how couldn't - an author care about how his or her books look?

Covers matter. In my experience, a different cover can make you think you're reading an entirely different book.

My books are not generic. You know when you're reading a Joy Fielding book.

The reader became the book; and summer night Was like the conscious being of the book.

I hope that 'House of Suns' functions as an independent novel.

My books didn't fit a marketing niche.

A book's title is vital.

I hate to see great works of literature ghettoized, whereas others that conform to the rules, conventions, and procedures of the genre we call literary fiction get accorded greater esteem and privilege. I also have a problem with how books are marketed, with certain cover designs and typefaces. They're often stamped with an identity that has nothing to do with their effect on the reader.

Everyone has a bookplate these days, and the collectors are after it. The fool and his bookplate are soon parted. To distribute one's ex libris is inanely to destroy the only significance it has, that of indicating the past or present ownership of the volume in which it is placed.

I don't want people reading my books just because they're horror or mysteries. I want them to read them because they're Joe Lansdale books.

I don't like my books being defined by their "about"-ness. So now the subtitle has just become a kind of strap-line on the cover.