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Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones.

There are good books and there are bad books, period, that's the distinction.

Children simply don't make the distinction; a book is either good or bad. And some of the books they think are good are very, very bad indeed.

All good books have one thing in common - they are truer than if they had really happened.

I think that some books are more successful than others to certain readers. People who read my books for the humor, they're going to love one book. People who read my books for the mystery, they might not like that book quite as much.

I don't like the idea of a book being a test or being used for a test. The way - in my opinion - to make good readers is to let kids choose their own books and not test them.

Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a poor substitute for life.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

An idea has been running in my head that books lose and gain qualities in the course of time, and I have worried over it a good deal, for what seemed to be a paradox, I felt to be a truth.

I've always looked upon research as an opportunity to satisfy my curiosity. But the other side of the coin is one must not be so caught up in it that one never gets the book written.