Well, it's so hard for books to take off. You give years of your life to something that probably won't happen, so when it does, it feels a little... unjust.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Every time I write a book, I've probably taken five years off my life.
You want all your books to stick around after you've gone.
That's the thing about a book: You're in the public life for a little bit, and then you sort of go away for a little while - several years, in my case - and then you come out again, hopefully.
What people tell me they take away from my books is that they can shape their lives, they can achieve their own dreams. And certainly that's what I want them to take away.
I put off writing the first Left Behind book for a year because I got invited to assist Billy Graham in his memoirs, and had we known what we were putting off for a year, we might not have put it off.
You just don't give up. There have been times when everything seemed to conspire against getting a book done or printed, and I would feel like turning my back on the whole thing. But I came back and persisted.
I sometimes feel that if your book sells more than 20 years, then there's something in it that you can say, gee, I did something that endures, that's timeless.
I feel as though I've gotten to a point where I don't really want to set a book in any real place ever again.
Writing a book is a very lonely business. You are totally cut off from the rest of the world, submerged in your obsessions and memories.
I never expected my books to do even as well as they have. I still feel grateful for it, every single day.