Alinsky's 1971 book, 'Rules for Radicals,' is a favorite of the Obamas. Michele Obama quoted it at the Democratic Convention. One Alinsky tactic is to 'Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.' That's what the White House did in targeting Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santelli and Jim Cramer.
The technology that threatens to kill off books as we know them - the 'physical book,' a new phrase in our language - is also making the physical book capable of being more beautiful than books have been since the middle ages.
I felt that no self-help book had been written for millennials yet, so my ultimate goal was to write it.
I've read the 'Book of Revelation' a million times. It does not make sense, obviously. It needs to be decoded.
A book suggests a whole world and story that I could have never thought of in a million years.
I did know that the book would end with a mind-boggling trial, but I didn't know exactly how it would turn out. I like a little suspense when I am writing, too.
I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine... before she realizes she's reading.
To be a good researcher is to be a good detective, and I enjoy ferreting out tidbits of information. For a diary book like 'A Coal Miner's Bride,' newspapers come in handy for small everyday details such as weather reports.
I'd rather create a miniature painting than a Taj Mahal of a book.
I try to write short novels and leave details out not because I want to be minimalist, but because I think that it enables the readers' creativity and interaction with the book.
You know you have a gambling problem when it's 4 A.M. at the Mirage Sports Book and you're walking around going, 'Hey you get the lacrosse scores?'
I feel character description from a book can mislead you and actually make you fall off course when you're representing a character using a script.
Reading the Book of Mormon is one of the greatest persuaders to get men on missions.
If you write a book about a bygone period that lies east of the Mississippi River, then it's a historical novel. If it's west of the Mississippi, it's a western, a different category. There's no sense to it.
There's no way you can misunderstand the teachings of the Qur'an, there's no way you can misunderstand the teachings of the Bible, there's no way you can misunderstand the teachings of the Bhaghavad Gita, or of the Book of Mormon, or of the other sacred texts of many of those religions.
I'm a commercial writer, not an author. Margaret Mitchell was an author. She wrote one book.
Moby Dick - that book is so amazing. I just realized that it starts with two characters meeting in bed; that's how my book begins, too, but I hadn't noticed the parallel before, two characters forced to share a bed, reluctantly.
I don't read books. I read 'On the Road' in high school, and that was awesome, so I guess that's my favorite book. 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' even though I didn't read it, that's the greatest story. SparkNotes came in when I was in high school, and that was the greatest invention.
Rereading 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' I was struck by what I had forgotten of the book: in a manner of pages, we encounter shame, history, ruin, conflicting stories, and wounds badly healed; in short, the South.
I'm obsessive. That's the word for me. I obsess - perhaps to the point where it's moderately dysfunctional. I tend to put a book through about 100 revisions. If anything, that's an understatement. If there's another author out there who does this sort of revision, I would really like to meet him. Maybe we could form some sort of support group.
