My father always said, 'Never trust anyone whose TV is bigger than their book shelf' - so I make sure I read.
I've just started to get really envious when I go into people's houses and see books on a shelf.
Seeing one's books on the shelf tells you so much about the way somebody has, over the years, put together their private library, which is a reflection of their minds and their selves.
I started rereading 'The Dutchman' - I kind of just pulled it off the shelf.
Then I celebrated my Wall of Books. I counted the volumes on my twenty-foot-long modernist bookshelf to make sure none had been misplaced or used as kindling by my subtenant. “You’re my sacred ones,” I told the books. “No one but me still cares about you. But I’m going to keep you with me forever. And one day I’ll make you important again.” I thought about that terrible calumny of the new generation: that books smell.
When I started writing 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid,' I was trying to write the type of book you might enjoy, put back on your shelf, and rediscover a few years later. I hope that the book finds its way into the bathroom of every kid in America.
Print books have an amazing superpower because they don't disappear when you're done with them. Books on the shelf remind you that they exist.
Some people are happy when they are at the sea; I'm happy when I'm standing in front of a shelf of books. It feels like the known place and also the beginning of a new adventure. It has that simultaneous paradoxical effect of making me feel absolutely calm and very excited.
