Study how water flows in a valley stream smoothly and freely between the rocks. Also learn from holy books and wise people. Everything - even mountains rivers plants and trees - should be your teacher.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.

Here's my rule: You always want to pay cash for your own books because if they look at the name on the credit card and then they look at the name on the book jacket then there's this look of such profound sympathy for you that you had to resort to this. It really is withering.

It's hard for children's authors to be accepted when they try to write adult books. J.K. Rowling is the exception because people are so eager to read anything by her but it took Judy Blume three or four tries before she had a success.

The best translations cannot convey to us the strength and exquisite delicacy of thought in its native garb and he to whom such books are shut flounders about in outer darkness.

I like writing for children. It seems to me that most people underestimate their understanding and the strength of their feelings and in my books for them I try to put this right.

I learned easily and had time to follow my inclination for sports (light athletics and skiing) and chemistry which I taught myself by reading all textbooks I could get.

I love sports as all Bostonians seem to. I love books and movies as all writers seem to.

As a kid I was fascinated with sports and I loved sports more than anything else. The first books I read were about sports like books about Baseball Joe as one baseball hero was called.

The other thing is this industry has decided it only has one market. Unlike any other industry in the world unlike film or books or sports even this industry has decided it has only one market and that's 14 year old boys.

While writing my first 90 books I was magazine editor publisher book publisher executive etc. so I was established in publishing. three of my seven or so books were biographies of sports stars and really opened doors for me in that area.

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

You've got all these books on self help getting to know yourself doing the right thing eating the so-called right foods even down to what books you have on your shelves. People are encouraged to look to themselves first as opposed to being a part of society.

There are relatively few science fiction or fantasy books with the main character being an old person.

I like to browse in occult bookshops if for no other reason than to refresh my commitment to science.

I have heard Science Fiction and Fantasy referred to as the fiction of ideas and I like that definition but it's the mainstream public that chooses my books for the most part.