“There are people already sharing eBooks out there, .. and they do it simply because they love books. You don't buy a second copy of a book, cut the spine off, lay each page on a scanner, run that .tif through an OCR (Optical Character Reader), hand edit the resulting output for errors and then post it online if you don't love the book. it can up to 80 hours to turn a printed novel into an eBook. I figure if someone out there is willing to put in 80 hours of work promoting my book, then I'd prefer they do it in a way that gives a better return to me.” PeopleIfsWayGivingBookCharacterHandsRunningTurnsHoursNovelCuttingFiguresWillingReturnReaderPagesLaysErrorsPostsOnlineCopiesPromotingPrintedEditsSpineOutputReturn To Me Author:Cory Doctorow
“I think people today are very cynical. They need to bring other people down. Reality television and tabloid magazinesnever before did we need to see movie stars taking out their garbage. But all of a sudden, it's front-page newstrying to figure out who's dating whom, all that stuff. Who cares?” PeopleThinkingNeedsTryingRealityCareTodayStarsStuffFrontsFiguresTelevisionNewsPagesDatingMagazinesCynicalWho CaresMovie StarGarbageTabloidsReality Television Author:Scarlett Johansson
“The interview process tests not what the applicant knows, but how well they can process tricky questions: If you wanted to figure out how many times on average you would have to flip the pages of the Manhattan phone book to find a specific name, how would you approach the problem? If a spider fell to the bottom of a 50-foot well, and each day climbed up 3 feet and slipped back 2, how many days would it take the spider to get out of the well? .” IfsKnowsWellsBookProblemWantedNamesProcessFeetFiguresApproachPagesTestsBottomAveragePhonesInterviewsEach DaySpidersFlipTrickyManhattan Author:Bill Gates
“You're able to use a search engine, like Google or Bing or whatever. But those engines don't understand anything about pages that they give you; they essentially index the pages based on the words that you're searching, and then they intersect that with the words in your query, and they use some tricks to figure out which pages are more important than others. But they don't understand anything.” GivingImportantUseAbleFiguresPagesTricksEnginesGoogleSearch EngineQueries Author:Stuart J. Russell
“When I was writing the memoir, every page was a battle with myself because I knew I had to tell the truth. That's what the memoir form demands. I also had to figure out how much of the truth do I tell, how do I make the truth as balanced as I possibly can? How do I make these people as complicated and as human and as unique and as multifaceted as I possibly can? For me, that was the way I attempted to counteract some of that criticism.” PeopleWayWritingHumansFormFiguresBattleDemandPagesUniqueCriticismComplicatedMemoirTelling The TruthBalanced Author:Jesmyn Ward
“I had this bad habit of not writing out a first draft and going back. For me it was the first sentence, then the second sentence, and I might be several weeks on the first page instead of writing a draft and trying to figure it out from there.” WritingTryingFirstsMightWeekFiguresHabitPagesSentencesBad Habits Author:Donald Ray Pollock
“I also liked it when professors assigned us stories that they love. In general, I liked workshops more when they were more than just a workshop, when the professor took the time to actually guide us as young writers and teach us things it took them a long time to figure out on their own. I could probably write ten pages on this question.” WritingLongStoriesYoungTeachFiguresTenPagesLong TimeGuidesProfessorsWorkshopsYoung Writers Author:Mary J. Miller
“I figure 1000 words a day, or four pages, and sometimes I'll write more, but I'll try not to. Because I think you don't want to exhaust what it is you're writing about, so the next day you would have to gear up for a brand new scene.” ThinkingWantWritingTryingSometimesNextFourFiguresScenePagesBrandsNext DayGearsBrand New Author:Carolyn See
“Girls are complicated. The instruction manual that comes with girls is 800 pages, with chapters 14, 19, 26 and 32 missing, and it's badly translated, hard to figure out.” HardGirlMissingFiguresPagesComplicatedInstructionChaptersManuals Author:Hugh Laurie
“I don't know who said that novelists read the novels of others only to figure out how they are written. I believe it's true. We aren't satisfied with the secrets exposed on the surface of the page: we turn the book around to find the seams.” KnowsBelieveSaidBookTurnsI BelieveSecretNovelWrittenFiguresPagesSurfaceSatisfiedNovelistsExposed Author:Gabriel Garcia Marquez
“I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made fo figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently.” WantMindPersonsMadeMomentsChangeFiguresWalkingPagesWalking AwayRecurringI've Changed Book:Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road Source: Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road
“The phrase 'I just turn on my monkey and it makes me feel good' sounds very dirty, but I can't explain why. It's great to try to use expressions like that on the comics page. People want to complain but they can't, because they can't figure out quite what they should be complaining about.” PeopleWantFeelsShouldTryingI CanUseTurnsSoundFiguresExpressionPagesComplainingFeel GoodDirtyPhrasesMonkeysTurn-on Author:Stephan Pastis