R. A. Salvatore Quotes

Actually, I love trying to figure out why certain books become hits while others, which may be just as good, have trouble finding an audience.

Just pick a political story at random and read the comments. There is no logic or reason on either side - only hypocrisy and hate.

I've never seen a worse situation than that of young writers in the United States. The publishing business in North America is so commercialized.

When I first started working on 'Staying Dead,' I got some well-meaning but negative feedback from industry folk because - back in 2001 - epic fantasy was still the big thing, alternate history a tight runner-up.

As an author, I really hate a reader like me. There's no loyalty.

The reason that last-ditch political maneuvering has become business as usual in Washington is that the actors involved are drunk on blame and are convinced that the voting public is, too. They count on outrage, thereby spreading numbness. They cherish the prospect of partisan fury, thereby inspiring nonpartisan disgust.

I think in politics, in Congress, you often do things that are Republican, or you do things because you're a Democrat. Sometimes that's good, obviously, and sometimes that's obviously bad. But in the news business, there's no such thing as Republican or Democratic news. News is news.

I support Democrats and Republicans. And I'm telling you that the business community in this company is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the President of the United States. And until he's gone, everybody's going to be sitting on their thumbs.

I had a very realistic expectation of the level of success that it was possible to attain writing romance novels.

The vast majority of fiction is written to markets and to this damnable business we have nowadays of categorizing everything.

What I don't like about Washington, if we say one syllable or one sentence, or this guy said something bad about me, then, all of a sudden, they have to be my mortal enemy. I don't think that's how it works in American business.

I'm always trying to, using literature, subvert people's responses.

If getting a contract was relatively straightforward, writing fiction was far harder than I could have imagined, and there were moments during the long and torturous edit process when it seemed that 'Zulu Hart,' the first of the trilogy, would never be fit for public consumption.

There were many times in my initial days as a writer when I had felt the need to talk to someone, to leverage on someone's experience, to learn from someone who had written and published a book.

Abandoning traditions of responsibility and civility won the GOP control of both houses of Congress in 1994. Rejecting any compromise brought Republicans the perks and power of majority control for the first time in 40 years. Thus did the politics of total resistance become their path of least resistance.

Democrats, for their part, have chosen to go the way of reckless obstruction, pursuing the first partisan impeachment in history.

There are times when American politics seems like little more than two groups in a fever to prevent each other from trespassing upon their respective soothing versions of unreality

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

What is polarizing in America is the Democrat Party agenda. What is polarizing and divisive is the Democrat Party agenda and the things they have been trying to do.

When activists say we need to move past the partisan divide, what they mean is: Shut up and get with my program. Have you ever heard anyone say, "We need to get past all of this partisan squabbling and name-calling. That's why I'm going to abandon all my objections and agree with you"?

It will be an unusual dynamic [in Congress]. It won't be like the rallying behind President [Barack] Obama in 2009 or behind President [George W.] Bush, even at the beginning of his presidency, or even [Bill] Clinton in '93, when he got his budget through on a partisan vote.

It's fine to talk about politics with people you agree with. But it is rude to argue about politics with people you disagree with. Political discourse becomes isolated, and isolated discourse becomes more extreme.

The anger on the left - I've never seen anything like it. I mean, they're right now opposing everything. Democrats in the Senate are filibustering absolutely everything.

It is only in Washington where many still have a lingering animosity for the political parties. My friends, we need to get over it.

The Republican Party is the party of national security. There's hardly a national security wing of the Democratic Party anymore. So if we turn away from it, that'll be a big problem.