The only pleasure in redecorating or moving house comes from stumbling across books that I'd almost forgotten I owned.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Books were this wonderful escape for me because I could open a book and disappear into it, and that was the only way out of that house when I was a kid.
Whenever I've been stuck on a project, it's always brought me solace to the return to books that moved me in the past. It's a nice way to get outside my own head; and it brings me back to one of the most important reasons I write at all: to bring some pleasure to readers, to make them think or feel.
I grew up in a house with very few books.
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.
Books are the heart of any home, and I spend hours going through books for design inspiration.
I love books. I read voraciously, and I happened to have been fortunate to have been in the right place at the right time.
It's natural that I want to recreate a home.
Which is a wonderful irony, I have property there. I go back every chance I get. One of the main reasons I actually wrote the book, agreed to write it having never wanted to do that in my life, very intimidating by the way to write a book.
One of the great privileges of my life was growing up in a house without books.
I always knew that I wanted to live with books, even as a child, because we traveled a lot. Home was the book to which I came back every evening.