Elliot Perlman Quotes

The idea is to become a best-selling author first and then the rest of my books will be slam dunks.

When 'The Shadow of the Wind' became a success I had already been a working writer, I'd been through the ups and downs, I'd seen how it worked.

I've had the odd good luck of starting slowly and building gradually, something few writers are allowed anymore. As a result I've seen each of my books called the breakthrough. And each was, in its way.

I am happy because I am no longer an author.

An author needs to be in the market. He or she needs to come out with a new book every year. That keeps you alive in the public mind and gives a push to your older books.

Any fool can write a novel but it takes real genius to sell it.

I'm very lucky. I'm very fortunate that my books have never gone out of print - none of them.

I would very much like to become a best-selling author.

Sadly, I don't think books ever sell based on your name alone - the minute we make an assumption like that is the minute it all goes horribly wrong!

There are writers who go their whole lives and never hit that No. 1 spot.

After seven years of writing - and working many jobs to support my family - I finally got published.

My name became a brand, and I'd love to say that was the plan from the start. But the only plan was to keep writing books. And I've stuck to that ever since.

For me to be a billion-dollar author, I need to have people buying my books at Wal-Mart.

Jerry and I hoped that it would be a popular bestseller.

I never set out to do this - getting to No. 1 in the 'New York Times' bestseller list wasn't even a pipedream.

I'm surviving and developing as a writer. I don't know what brings you to mass attention in terms of sales. But I've gotten more and more comfortable with it. Of course if that changes, I'll be comfortable with that. All I can do is write the best books I can.

I never expected to write a book about a slum in Ireland that was going to catapult me, as they say, into some kind of - onto the best seller list.

I have high hopes for Renee Ballard's literary life, and it can't start out better than the top of 'USA TODAY''s best-seller list.

Every time I had a book come out, I'm like, 'Is it going to be number one?'

I honestly thought I probably did sell 100 million books. That doesn't seem out of the ordinary to me.

I never set out to be a published writer.

When I started writing, the deal was that publishers gave you a grand or two as an advance to buy some sweets, with the promise that they would make a big putsch with your fourth book when you'd built up a bit of a following. But by the time my fourth book came out, previously unpublished authors were the new big thing.

One, I have a wonderful publisher, Black Sparrow Press; as long as they exist, they will keep me in print. And they claim they sell very respectable numbers of my books, so I guess, and it's true, every place I go, my books are in libraries and on bookshelves.

A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.

When I settled to writing seriously, which would be in my 30s, I did expect to be published eventually, but my aspirations weren't very high. A published book and a few appreciative readers was my idea of heaven.