Augusten Burroughs Quotes

Obviously, my name is known now, but I don't think people generally tend to recognize authors very much. People like J. K. Rowling maybe, Gillian Flynn might be recognized, but I reckon she could walk by me on the street, and I wouldn't know who she was.

I don't chase publishers. Publishers chase me.

Best-sellerism is the star system of the book world. A "best seller" is a celebrity among books. It is a book known primarily (sometimes exclusively) for its well-knownness.

I don't think I have even achieved fame. Of course, Hemingway says that fame is death's little sister.

Quite often I can be in a bookshop, standing beneath a great big picture of myself and paying for a book with a credit card clearly marked John Grisham, yet no one recognises me. I often say I'm a famous author in a country where no one reads.

From the point of view of being in the public radar, comedians have less problems than other actors. Action movie stars like Stallone or Schwarzenegger usually attract the more aggressive fans.

I think politicians and movie actors … are similar in more ways than they’re different. There is an egocentric quality about both; there is a very sensitive awareness of the public attitude, because you live or die on public favor or disfavor. There is the desire for publicity and for acclaim, because, again, that’s part of your life... And in a strange and bizarre way, when movie actors come to Washington, they’re absolutely fascinated by the politicians. And when the politicians go to Hollywood, they’re absolutely fascinated by the movie stars. It’s a kind of reciprocity of affection by people who both recognize in a sense they’re in the same racket.

Writers are not celebrities, so you don't expect to walk down the street and hear, 'Oh my God, there's Sylvia Day.' You prefer to be anonymous.

I lead a unique existence as someone who is famous for being young on film, or young in the minds of everyone.

Writers in Britain aren't really celebrities. You become kind of a darling of a small set.

I just wrote the book and was amazed and astounded that it became a bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize. It still hasn't sunk in.

It's a strange failure of the literary world that Updike never quite received his due. Despite winning two Pulitzers and two National Book Awards and countless other awards and honours, he was denied the Nobel.

Drake has become a mega-star, with sell-out crowds around the world.

Winning the Whitbread was a very major thing for me. I'd always been well reviewed, but this made me widely read.

Film stars and players can be sources of entertainment but never ideals.

I've pretty much always been in the limelight. A star in my own right.

Herta Muller, Mo Yan, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio - for many of us, the Nobels have become doubly educational: We simultaneously learn of an author's existence and find out that we ought to have been reading him or her all along.

When people say I've become a star, it takes time to sink in.

When Paul Beatty's 'The Sellout' was first published in America in 2015, it was a small release. It got a rave review in the daily 'New York Times' and one in the weekly 'New York Times Book Review,' too, for good measure. But by and large, it was not a conversation-generating book.

Being a star comes with not just fame and fortune, but with awareness and responsibility.

Every author dreams of the kind of attention that 'Beautiful Children' has received in the press. Obviously, it's a shock whenever it happens. So yeah, I'm as surprised as everybody else.

I never expected to be a movie star. It's not that I didn't want to be, I didn't think about it. I wanted to be an actor.

Being a movie star is a quality that somebody sort of embodies, and being a celebrity is something that people give to you. It has to do with being recognizable, as opposed to something that people recognize in you. I just hope to make good movies. I know that sounds simple, but it's true.

There are, I think, three countries left in the world where I can go and I'm not as well-known as I am here. I'm a pretty big star, folks - I don't have to tell you. Superstar, I guess you could say.

Popularity means people think they know you.