This morning I looked at the books on my shelves and thought that they have no knowledge of my existence. They come to life because I open them and turn their pages, and yet they don't know that I am their reader.
If you've written a powerful book about a woman and your publisher then puts a 'feminine' image on the cover, it 'types' the book.
Everybody thinks that an important book has to be a big, long book.
It is utterly astonishing how ordinary a book can be and still be thought the product of omniscience.
No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.
Books exist for me not as physical entities with pages and binding, but in the province of my mind.
If you put a pink cover on something, critics make a certain set of assumptions and may not even read the book. But my readers are happy with it.
I have a feeling that books are a lot like people - they change as you age, so that some books that you hated in high school will strike you with the force of a revelation when you're older.
The book, if you would see anything in it, requires to be read in the clear, brown, twilight atmosphere in which it was written; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages.
At different times and in different places I have come to expect certain books to look a certain way, and, as in all fashions, these changing features fix a precise quality onto a book's definition. I judge a book by its cover; I judge a book by its shape.
I think people have the wrong idea of 'Moby Dick' as this somber, boring thing.
Covers matter. In my experience, a different cover can make you think you're reading an entirely different book.
A book on cheap paper does not convince. It is not prized, it is like a wheezy doctor with pigtail tobacco breath, who needs a manicure.
Women's books are kind of discriminated against. If a man writes a book about his family stories, people think of it as literature. If it's a woman, she's 'spilling her guts,' and it's not art.
I don't really read 'business books,' and I didn't think 'The Paradox of Choice' was a business book. I'm very surprised and gratified that the business world thought it was one.
We had a few non-fiction books at home, but my dad was of the opinion that fiction was a complete and utter waste of time because it wasn't real - so what was the point of reading it?
I was anticipating that some readers might misread [the book] ROOM itself as a hymn to homeschooling.
When finally I mustered the courage to tell a novelist friend that I was talking to editors about a biography, her reply was, 'Oh, that's okay. That's not a real book.'
I think in general, novels by men tend to be taken more seriously than novels by women.
My sense of what a book should be has changed so radically. I like to think for the better.
Nobody wants an ugly book.
