Chris Pavone Quotes

Of course, people say maybe there are some self-published books out there that shouldn't be out there. Well, it's the same with conventional publishing.

When I was a boy in the late 1950s, the public library refused to stock books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. They were regarded as vulgar, ill-written potboilers.

I think people are confusing the right to write with the right to be published.

The way British publishing works is that you go from not being published no matter how good you are, to being published no matter how bad you are.

There are three difficulties in authorship: to write anything worth publishing, to find honest men to publish it, and to find sensible men to read it.

You can write the best book you can, and that might still not be enough. Appeal isn't something that most writers can't strive for or identify. It's something even the best agents and editors can't always identify.

As a writer, you write the book, you give it to your editor, it's copy edited, it's published, it's thrown out there, and then there's a response.

… most censorship took place in the heads of writers, and what the writers failed to cut usually got filtered out by editors in publishing houses.

I know that many authors say editors don't edit anymore, but that's not been true in my experience.

Very wonderful books might be published, and very terrible books might be published.

My books have all generated controversy.

In my first story, 'Mr. Mysterious & Company'... I was asked to take out some of the humor because editors were afraid reviewers would dismiss the book as a joke. Today, humor is enjoyed and no longer regarded as literary brummagem.

The only place we were really told to tone it down - where other people would use the word censorship, but I wouldn't - was when we did MTV right after the Beavis and Butt-head thing.

Every year, the Giller jury is different. You write the best book you can and throw it out there.

A specific editor in a specific place likes the book, and you're in. A different editor on a different day goes, 'Oh, this isn't for me', or doesn't even look at it, and that's it.

I believe if you write a great book, the chances are it'll get a great reception.

I have been told by a member of the board of one of Canada's most prominent literary magazines that a submission of mine once caused a great deal of controversy.

One of the disconcerting things about writing for publication is that you're trying to clear your little parcel of land in a field where Taste is king - and, as we all know, there's no accounting for Taste.

All those people whose faces decorate the shopping bags of Barnes and Noble, with a few exceptions, would never get published today.

The decision came from the publisher. It certainly was cleared by Chicago. And then they come out with these fine sounding words about relation to readers and their obligation. It has nothing to do with that.

The marketing department of any given publishing house has far more power over free expression in America than any government office.

It seems to me that the surest way to remove from the stage really undesirable plays, is for the public to refuse to go to see them. Censorship by law has always seemed to me too difficult and complicated where art of any kind is concerned.

As always, a lot of bad books will be published. Some good books will be published, and you have to seek them out.

On Broadway, there is no censoring, just self-censorship and doing what makes sense.

There are 195 crime books published in Sweden every year. You could cut that to 100 and keep the good ones.