John Boyne Quotes

Try to meet as many authors, agents, and editors as you can.

But I was, and still am, an avid reader and so when I first started I chose to photograph many of the great writers in this country to try and earn a living.

I wanted to be involved with literature. I certainly wasn't going to be able to write for a living, and I didn't have enough confidence in my talent to think that I should be just doing that. Publishing seemed like fun to me - to be involved with writers. And it did turn out to be.

I think one of the things the writers' festival does that is very good is that it brings writers from around the world and around the country and locally and puts them all in the one spot together, and that's what a lot of the world's great writers' festivals do.

For a lot of people, becoming an author is a change in occupation... they are coming from something that totally has nothing to do with this. If they are expecting to come into a room full of people praising them, then they are in the wrong place.

If the rewards to authors go down, simple economics says there will be fewer authors. It's not that people won't burn with the passion to write. The number of people wanting to be novelists is probably not going to decline - but certainly the number of people who are going to be able to make a living as authors is going to dramatically decrease.

I just love doing different things, which is what being a working author is like.

Any independent bookstore that has managed to survive is the best place to do a reading.

We decided we wanted the site to provide readers with fresh new stories to enjoy between major book releases by their favorite authors while allowing those same authors to flex their creative muscles.

Around the time I turned 30, I wanted to publish a novel.

Writing careers are short. For every 100 writers, 99 never get published. Of those who do, only one in every hundred gets a career out of it, so I count myself as immensely privileged.

I was directed because I knew I wanted to be a novelist, but I didn't have a very good job or a way of getting published. I found those years to be among the most difficult of my life.

I would love to see young writers come out of college and know there is a possibility to be a novelist.

My book sales make 'real writers' possible.

I know very well that one cannot become an author by just writing a book.

There are plenty of paths to becoming a writer, but I think the most reliable ones involve total commitment: writing for magazines and newspapers, teaching writing, editing books, representing authors.

Writing offers fairly large rewards to a few successful people, but the rewards come late, and most writers are failures.

There is probably no hell for authors in the next world - they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this.

It never occurred to me when I was young that I could be an author. That would be like saying, "I want to be a movie star" or "I want to be a wizard." I didn't have any concept of what that path would look like. Maybe that's why I didn't publish my first book until I was 38.

Not everybody thought they could be a dentist or an automobile mechanic but everybody knew they could be a writer.

We, the authors, want people to buy books. That is the only way we can earn - from our royality.

I published 'Rules of Civility' while I was still working. It became a best seller. I was working on this book, and then I decided to retire.

I sold 'Hattie Big Sky' without an agent but quickly realized a writing career required an agent.

At every writers' conference, you have the opportunity to hear from best-selling authors, top literary agents, and excellent editors who will demystify the publishing industry and give you great advice, no matter where you are in your writing career or what you're currently struggling with.

Every single day, authors read at bookstores and libraries - and coffeeshops and bars - all over the country. And these readings are amazing: you get to hear the book in the author's own voice, ask questions, and meet the writer. For free.