“I think What Dreams May Come is the most important (read effective) book I’ve written. It has caused a number of readers to lose their fear of death — the finest tribute any writer could receive. … Somewhere In Time is my favorite novel.”

— Richard Matheson

"Ed Gorman Calling: We Talk to Richard Matheson" http://www.mysteryfile.com/Matheson/Interview.html (2004).

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Richard Matheson 58

American fiction writer 1926–2013

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“Somewhere In Time is the story of a love which transcends time, What Dreams May Come is the story of a love which transcends death. … I feel that they represent the best writing I have done in the novel form.”

Richard Matheson (1926–2013) American fiction writer

Introduction to an Omnibus edition of his work, as quoted in Somewhere in Time (1998), p. 318 - 319

“I have only [written the Water Margin] to fill up my spare time, and give pleasure to myself; […] I have written it so that the uneducated can read it as well as the educated […]. Alas! Life is so short that I shall not even know what the reader thinks about it, but still I shall be satisfied if a few of my friends will read it and be interested. Also I do not know what I may think of it in my future life after death, because then I may not able to even read it. So why think anything further about it?”

Shi Nai'an (1296–1372) Chinese writer

Variant translation by Pearl S. Buck: "Alas, I was born to die! How can I know what those who come after me and read my book will think of it? I cannot even know what I myself, born into another incarnation, will think of it. I do not even know if I myself afterwards can even read this book. Why therefore should I care?" (All Men are Brothers, 1933; p. xiii)
Preface to Water Margin

“It's definitely the book that I can tell—I don't know if other people can tell but I can tell as a writer–-is probably the most divisive that I've written. It has an equal number of detractors as it does fans. It doesn't really hold true with the other books. It was the one that took the longest to write, and the one that seemed the most important at the time. It's an unwieldy book… I like it.”

Bret Easton Ellis (1964) American novelist

On Glamorama
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=571852

“It is a general observation that people write as they read. As a rule, careful writers are careful readers and vice versa. A careful writer wants to be read carefully. He cannot know what it means to be read carefully but by having done careful reading himself. Reading precedes writing. We read before we write. We learn to write by reading. A man learns to write well by reading well good books, by reading most carefully books which are most carefully written.”

Leo Strauss book Persecution and the Art of Writing

Source: Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952), How to Study Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise, p. 144

“I hate it when something I’ve had published "inspires" some nut to imitate what I’ve written, or some teacher gets fired for having her students read one of my stories or novels.”

Richard Matheson (1926–2013) American fiction writer

"Ed Gorman Calling: We Talk to Richard Matheson" http://www.mysteryfile.com/Matheson/Interview.html (2004)

“What are books but tangible dreams? What is reading if it is not dreaming? The best books cause us to dream; the rest are not worth reading.”

Rikki Ducornet (1949) American writer and artist

Source: The Fan-Maker's Inquisition: A Novel of the Marquis de Sade

“I have finished To Kill a Mockingbird. It is now my favorite book of all time, but then again, I always think that until I read another book.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast

“I read anything that’s going to be interesting. But you don’t know what it is until you’ve read it. Somewhere in a book on the history of false teeth there’ll be the making of a novel.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

“The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.”

Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938) American writer

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