What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.
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Chapter 3J. D. Salinger
» J. D. Salinger - all quotes »
Authors have a greater right than any copyright, though it is generally unacknowledged or disregarded. They have a right to the reader's civility. There are favorable hours for reading a book, as for writing it, and to these the author has a claim. Yet many people think that when they buy a book they buy with it the right to abuse the author.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I once wrote, in The Information, that an Englishman wouldn't bother to attend a reading even if the author in question was his favorite living writer, and also his long-lost brother — even if the reading was taking place next door. Whereas Americans go out and do things. But Meeting the Author, for me, is Meeting the Reader. Some of the little exchanges that take place over the signing table I find very fortifying: they make up for some of the other stuff you get.
Martin Amis
I'm a commercial writer, not an author. Margaret Mitchell was an author. She wrote one book.
Mickey Spillane
[On book reviewing] I will only turn down a book if I know I won't be able to muster enough interest to read the bloody thing. Or if I realize that I despise the author, and that I'm just going to become hysterical in my dispraise. A couple of times in my life I've disobeyed my own rule, and later regretted it. [...] It's a delicate business. All too often, if one writes a favorable notice, it's seen as a product of the old-boy network, and if one dispraises a book, it's seen as envy. Nobody seems able to accept that I review books as a book reviewer, not as a competing novelist. When I review, I'm being as honest as I can. And I'm saying to the reading public — the minuscule segment of the reading public that reads reviews — that this is my judgment.
John Banville
Dennis McCauley's Phone Number Is (private phone number) I called him yesterday, asking him to call me back at (Jacks phone number) so that I could correct an error (yet another one) in a story here at GP about me. But guess what? Dennis won't call me back. That's because he's not a real journalist, just a freelancer who is a biased video game industry jihadist.
Please contact Dennis and ask him to return his phone calls. Thanks. Jack ThompsonJack Thompson
Salinger, J. D.
Salis-Seewis, Johann Gaudenz von
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