H. W. Brands Quotes

I feel sorry for people who have to edit me. Which is why book writing is by far the most enjoyable. Really the only thing it's based on is whether it's good or not. No book editor, in my experience, is getting a manuscript and try to rewrite it.

I don't get on with novelists, don't enjoy their company. Once you've worked for a publisher, you understand the species, see them in their natural habitat, and it's not always pretty.

I read, therefore I'm interested in writers.

As a writer, I'm always aware of the fact that there are so many books out there.

I have a slightly bad back, which has made an enormous contribution to American literature.

What's the challenge in writing a novel that few people will read? I'm more than happy writing what I do and have no plans to change that.

I know from an editor's point of view or a publisher's point of view it's easier to slot me into a particular niche. But I know that I'd be bored unless I wrote a book that in some senses was a challenge.

I wrote speculative fiction because I loved to read it, and thought I could do better than some of the people who were getting published.

All my editors since Malcolm Cowley have had instructions to leave my prose exactly as I wrote it. In the days of Malcolm Cowley, with 'On the Road' and 'The Dharma Bums', I had no power to stand by my style for better or for worse.

I loved writing the Spellman novels, but I never had any plan to only write in one genre.

There were many times in my initial days as a writer when I had felt the need to talk to someone, to leverage on someone's experience, to learn from someone who had written and published a book.

I do not put myself in a box and say, for instance, I'm writing post-colonial literature. I don't know what I'm writing. That's the business of professors and critics. My job is to tell a story, and that's it.

For me, I would rather read a good book, from a contented author. I don't really care what it takes to produce that.

I'm not a writer who refuses to talk about a book until I've finished.

The first novel I wrote was a monster - clocking in at 180,000 words - but it died a death, a death it deserved. It was called 'The Gods First Make Mad.' It was a good title, but it was the only good thing about the book. I didn't let that put me off.

What I enjoy about reviewing and writing for newspapers and periodicals is simply the chance to talk about all kinds of books and lots of them.

I'm an ecumenical reader, grew up with all sorts of fiction, teach writing, went to the Iowa Writers' Workshop, so my tastes and interests are broad.

I love 'Memory Keeper's Daughter,' but in some ways I think 'The Lake of Dreams' is a stronger book. I was able to tell the story I wanted to tell. That's all you can ever do as a writer. From there on you have no control over it.

I think my fascination is less with genre figures than with writers in general.

I've heard people, usually writers, say that no one wrote a great book after winning the Booker, but I honestly did not feel any big pressure. 'The Gathering' did hang over me in that it was darker than I thought at the time.

To write what is worth publishing, to find honest people to publish it, and get sensible people to read it, are the three great difficulties in being an author.

I don't think any novelist should be concerned with literature.

I really have reached a point where I can write a book about all of this.

When I first started working on 'Staying Dead,' I got some well-meaning but negative feedback from industry folk because - back in 2001 - epic fantasy was still the big thing, alternate history a tight runner-up.

For me, as a beginning novelist, all other living writers form a control group for whom the world is a placebo.