Howard Fast Quotes

I'm very lucky. I'm very fortunate that my books have never gone out of print - none of them.

V. S. Pritchett was one of the most admired, fun, talked-about writers of the 20th century: he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth for his work with prose. He was born in 1900, wrote till he died in 1997, and has been tidily forgotten ever since. This is a real shame.

I want my books to sell, to be read. I'm not interested in being obscure.

Every writer secretly hopes that what he or she has written will endure.

There was a time when Stefan Zweig was the most widely read author in the world. He was lionized everywhere, translated into every language. For the first four decades of the 20th century, his novellas and biographies were devoured by rich and poor, young and old, well read or less so.

The bewildering success of my books continues to surprise me.

How wonderful it was to sit on a set with Norman Mailer and get to know him.

I'm not one of those writers that sits worrying about posthumous fame.

It's great that in the German language I've sold almost 30 million books. Isn't that amazing?

Saul Bellow never took my advice when he was my friend.

There are writers who go their whole lives and never hit that No. 1 spot.

My first book was the most successful debut novel in the U.K. ever and every one of my books has reached number one in the U.K. Clearly the British know brilliance when they see it.

Whenever anyone calls me 'The new J..K. Rowling,' I think, 'What's wrong with the old one?'

Gore Vidal has been a friend of mine for years, and he's one of the greatest writers in American history.

I imagined being a famous writer would be like being like Jane Austen.

The idea is to become a best-selling author first and then the rest of my books will be slam dunks.

My second book, Follow Me Down had some success, got good critical notices, went into a second printing and things like that, but Shiloh was by far the most successful of those first five novels.

B is for bestseller.

I never set out to do this - getting to No. 1 in the 'New York Times' bestseller list wasn't even a pipedream.

What had brought me to New York in the autumn of 1972 was a letter of recommendation written by Norman Mailer, the author of 'The Naked and the Dead' and American literature's leading heavyweight contender, to Dan Wolf, the delphic editor of 'The Village Voice.'

We sold 400 books of poetry and thought we were well on the way to immortality.

I want to leave behind a literary legacy.

When your Dad was the creator of 'Moby Dick' you kind of steer clear of getting compared in a solo-ing aspect.

I have high hopes for Renee Ballard's literary life, and it can't start out better than the top of 'USA TODAY''s best-seller list.

Every time I had a book come out, I'm like, 'Is it going to be number one?'