R. L. Stine 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.

My first YA novel, not many people have read. It's a fickle business. There's a degree of timing and luck involved.

When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it.

My first book, 'The Age of Wire and String,' came out in 1995, and it was hardly reviewed at all.

You have to go into rehab after doing a David Walliams book. David is such an important man; publishers rate him very, very highly, His books usually go straight to the bestseller number one spot on the day of publication. He is a hugely important writer as far as HarperCollins, his publishers, are concerned.

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

In the two novels I have published, it was my fortune at different times, and from different persons, to hear the most unqualified censure long before it was possible for me to hear the voice of the public. But my temper was not altered, nor my courage subdued.

Debut novels are difficult because nobody knows you... they just don't find a huge audience, because that's how the market works.

I chose to publish the first 'Shopaholic' book under a pseudonym because I wanted it to be judged on its own merits.

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.

The trade of authorship is a violent, and indestructible obsession.

In my first 15 or 20 years of authorship, I was almost never asked to give a speech or an interview. The written work was supposed to speak for itself, and to sell itself, sometimes even without the author's photograph on the back flap.

Authors worry. We worry about writing. Worry about our editors, our agents, our reviews, and our readers. We worry about everything, including all forms of social media including blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and personal websites.

Heinlein never had a best-seller. Even, I think, with Stranger in a Strange Land, I don't think it was actually on the New York Times best seller list.

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

When people talk about being a writer, the first words that come to mind are glamour and artistic parties like Charles Dickens used to mix cocktails for.

I'm not expecting the American literary community to welcome me with open arms. To them I'm just some schmuck kid who wrote some book.

With 'The Angel's Game', there was a lot of pressure from the expectations - expectations from the book industry and from readers; it's natural.

When you're an established name, you know that a children's book will have a pretty good chance of getting picked up. Like Madonna. It's not that I had this great idea. Actually, in my case, it was a great idea.

As a children's author, reviewers are generally very nice to you. I only ever wrote one adult book and received such a kicking for it that I was in trauma for the next six months.

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

That's very nice if they want to publish you, but don't pay too much attention to it. It will toss you away. Just continue to write.

The poems were the only thing I wrote that was not for everyone else. Then my editors at Penguin, who were also friends and had seen several of them, aggressively urged me to do a book. Editors can be aggressive, especially after drinks. That's how 'Beyond This Dark House' appeared.

Writers have to be careful not to confuse personal attention with the attention that's going towards the book.

I made a very conscious effort to finish 'The Cypress House' before 'So Cold the River' launched, because I thought that would help build a buffer between my writing and any impact that came from either the success or the failure of that first book.