Doris Lessing Quotes

There can hardly be a stranger commodity in the world than books. Printed by people who don't understand them; sold by people who don't understand them; bound, criticized and read by people who don't understand them; and now even written by people who don't understand them.

. I used to advise writers to just write their books and it will find a home, and suddenly that didn't seem as certain. I figured it was time to act. I considered a small press through RADAR, my literary non-profit.

Publishing is the final step in making a book; if I was afraid to publish one, I wouldn't write it in the first place.

When you get the ideas, that's a thrill; when you're writing the book and it's corning out well, that's a thrill; when you finish it and other people read it, that's a thrill. There are going to be reviews, of course; not everyone's going to love it. You feel sort of naked and vulnerable in a way. That's just a minor part of the process, really. If you can't take that part, you shouldn't be in the business. But there are so many joys to writing.

The only people who can be excused for letting a bad book loose on the world are the poor devils who have to write for a living.

I'm not saying all publishers have to be literary, but some interest in books would help.

When a man publishes a book, there are so many stupid things said that he declares he'll never do it again. The praise is almost always worse than the criticism.

I am a failure as a writer. The publishers won't publish me, the bookshops won't carry my books, the critics won't write about me. I am excluded from all anthologies, and completely ignored.

Having books published is very destructive to writing.

I sometimes think there is nothing really to be said about a novel but 'read the book.' I have a jaundiced view of literary critics.

Most new books drop immediately into the oblivion they so richly deserve.

There are men that will make you books, and turn them loose into the world, with as much dispatch as they would do a dish of fritters.

I am writing my second novel for children for Simon and Schuster.

It's really hard to get a book published, even a good book, but the better the book is the better chance it has of eventually catching someone's attention.

The definition of a writing career, is write a book, write another book, write another book

What I've discovered more recently is copies of books that I didn't represent, but that my boss represented when I assisted her on the dollar pile. I won't mention any names, but it is this profoundly bittersweet time of realizing, "Oh, I had a wonderful time working on this book and now it is a dollar relic on the side of the road."

I quit law in 1988 to start writing, and it took me 17 years from that point to get a book contract. I guess you can say I was on the slow train.

Some books and authors are best sellers, but most aren't. It may be easier to self-publish than it is to traditionally publish, but in all honesty, it's harder to be a best seller self-publishing than it is with a house.

Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

A new regulation for the publishing industry: "The advance for a book must be larger than the check for the lunch at which it was discussed.

In 2011, I announced that I was going to retire, and my agent panicked. So she says: No, no, no. You have to write a book with your husband.

If you're, like, a PhD student in English, and you look at each instance that Richard Yates is mentioned in the book...it has sort of it's own narrative that one could analyze and write literary criticism about.

Writing books isn't a drastic departure from writing for the stage.

Book-publishing is all about politics. Agents, editors, which books will be puffed, which ignored, etc.

You want to publish with a publisher because a publisher knows how to publish a book. And you don't. You really don't.