Mark Leyner Quotes

These days, there are many people around the world who listen to the songs that made me infamous and read the books that made me respectable.

Writers should be read but not seen. Rarely are they a winsome sight.

As long as my face is on page one, I don't care what they say about me on page seventeen.

I have never written out of a desire to be controversial.

I love the press; I even like the people that don't like me. If it wasn't for those people, no one would know who I was and I wouldn't have a gig.

Big Night and The Impostors are both things that I wrote.

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

I suppose my look, the way I play - you combine all that sort of stuff and that makes people interested in what I actually do. So then, when off-the-field stuff happens... I suppose it's one of those cocktail mixes.

If you get involved in a controversy, then that becomes the mesmerizing event that people remember you by.

I'm looking to find good stories, not big commercial pieces of work.

Let me tell you what the truth is... I have learned one thing in life: there is no such thing as bad press. There is not. That's a fundamental truth. The more bad things said about you, the more power they give to you.

If you see me as a controversial artist or controversial human being, then I could be cashing in on some reality shows. I am not doing anything like that. That's not my aim.

That's probably why I've become popular, because everyone's view of me is extremely polarized.

I'm one of those controversial celebs or whatever you want to call it, but I am actually a musician - people forget this.

Muhammad Ali was hated, and then he was loved at the very end. Floyd Mayweather was hated, and a lot of people are really coming around on him. So, I'm just trying to stay positive and try not to offend too many people along the way and hope for the best end result.

I've never wanted to be a person where somebody would be like, 'I like her; she's okay.' Love or hate is fine, because it sells tickets.

I hate controversies and want to be in the news for the right reasons.

In a lot of writing or intellectual discourse we're starting to use that model: "Oh, this is where it comes from!" I would like to concentrate on work which is more resistant to that procedure, as I think fiction is.

I think that whenever a Jew has any kind of notoriety, good or bad, the Jews find it to be good.

I am not a politician going around bragging about family values or putting myself on some ridiculous virtuous pedestal. I write comedy. And I am an actor. I am not going to solve the nation's problems. I don't actually spend my life in the way the tabloids like to think I do. I actually spend 95 percent of it writing comedy. Sober. Well, nearly sober anyway.

It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.

I don't know if there's a problem with original ideas... I think a healthy film industry should have a good supply of good, original writing.

The metal press has a certain type of audience, and I think most of them support the magazines' negative focus on me.

There's a lot of difference between being well known and being notorious and the black paintings didn't make me well known - they made me notorious.

I'm writing books. They're still a mix of fact and fiction and will continue to be. I think it's an interesting place to work.