Manuel Puig Quotes

It's a bit of a crapshoot out there with young writers right now anyway.

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

Hell hath no fury like a hustler with a literary agent.

Writing is a intensely personal activity. I can pen down my best thoughts when I'm alone. But when one is elevated into the stature of an author, you have to think about your books in terms of their business angle.

If you're going to write a book that might, in its very best accidental career, sell 30,000 copies, you've got to have a day job.

It has always been very difficult for writers to survive commercially in India because the market was so small. But that's not true at all any more. It's one of the world's fastest growing and most vibrant markets for books, especially in English.

The novel is just fine: It's novelists who aren't doing so well.

My book sales make 'real writers' possible.

I had a very realistic expectation of the level of success that it was possible to attain writing romance novels.

I have to be honest about this: I wouldn't tell a lot of kids to go and be writers. It's a tough, tough business. It's not a business. It's more like a tough road. It's a really tough road.

I'm not saying all publishers have to be literary, but some interest in books would help.

In leaving New York in 1957, I did leave without regret the literary demimonde of agents and would-be's and with-it nonparticipants; this world seemed unnutritious and interfering.

If you are a young writer today, it's very hard.

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

Literary life used to be quite different in Britain in the years I lived there, from 1971 to 1989, because money was not a factor - no one made very much except from U.S. sales and the occasional windfall.

It's not like publishing is perfect. Far from it. The industry is struggling to adapt and survive, and it's incredibly frustrating trying to break in.

I have several writer friends, but I don't involve them in my work process. I'm more likely to talk about the business of publishing with them.

I do one Xanth novel a year, because at the moment that is all that publishers will accept; they don't want any other type of fiction from me, so Xanth pays my way.

No one was interested in picking up a midlist series, even though I have a decent fanbase and respectable numbers.

The fact is that in this day and age I don't think any novelist can assume that a book will get attention.

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.

You know, it's sort of common wisdom among New York publishers that short story collections don't make money.

No one wants a masterpiece knocking around when your own book is looking for attention.

Publishing is a business of relationships. The relationships you make at one house can carry over to another.

You know, in the old days, you might be able to slowly sort of build an audience for your work by publishing two, three novels before you hit it big. You know, now, there's much more of an emphasis in the publishing houses on making sure that every book makes money.