“When we had to do book reports, I would pick a book that no one read a...” — Ahmet Zappa Quote

“When we had to do book reports, I would pick a book that no one read and just make it up and turn that in. I got praised for my imagination.”

“I had this whole ritual with my mother making the bed with me inside it so I would be invisible.”

“I didn't read at all until I was 12. I just couldn't. It was too frustrating.”

“At 12 I dropped out of school but I had lost interest in it at a much earlier age. For me, school was very very stressful.”

“The way this whole novel thing came together was, I sold them one bill of goods and then didn't communicate very well. I am like Captain Run-on Sentence.”

“I picked books by their covers - the worse the cover, the more I wanted to read it.”

“A writer loses possession of her work as soon as it's reaches its audience. Each reader brings his own experience and prejudice and imagination to the work. Television adaptation just goes one step further, and the novelist has to learn to let go.”

“Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.”

“Sexiness is in what you cover, not what you show. When you are covered, you leave a lot to people's imagination. People see the mystery in my eyes and find it sexy.”

“New York, for decades, offered a perpetual series of 'golden ages' to artists. You constantly had to measure yourself against the best, and you had to watch them, which meant that your imagination and also your sense of what the market could stand got very, very sharp.”

“I tend to like to read history - recent history, because I find that much more intriguing than just a writer's imagination.”

“I do a lot of curiosity buying; I buy it if I like the album cover, I buy it if I like the name of the band, anything that sparks my imagination.”