Kate Thompson 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.

Critics have a problem with sentimentality. Readers do not. I write for readers.

Whatever the reviewers feel about 'The Casual Vacancy', it is what I wanted it to be, and you can't say fairer than that as a writer.

I personally read criticism - at least by writers I enjoy - to stimulate a conversation in my own mind, and I like to think that's the function I serve for others.

I don't think of myself as a critic at all. I'm a reviewer and essayist. I mainly hope to share with others my pleasure in the books and authors I write about, though sometimes I do need to cavil and point out shortcomings.

I never read articles about my books.

Attending a book group is always a salutary experience for a writer. There's no guarantee that the people there will have enjoyed your book, and, as anyone who has taken part in a book group will know, half the fun is in ripping a book you haven't liked to shreds.

There is nothing quite like having your book read and truly understood. It's all the better when it's someone who knows how to go out there and sell it.

The purpose of a writer is to be read, and the criticism which would destroy the power of pleasing must be blown aside

Enough if every age produce two or three critics of this esoteric class, with here and there a reader to understand them.

A writer writes a book. People read it. You don't know what they're reading, really. You read a review and think, "That is so inaccurate. You can't have been reading my book with any kind of attention, because that is all wrong, that's even the wrong name you're including there." But these reviewers have been diminished in importance, the work is so little respected. If you're reviewed by a real critic, by James Wood or Louis Menand, then you get something that is informed, interesting, and highly articulate. But the average review doesn't have that kind of depth anymore.

Nothing induces me to read a novel except when I have to make money by writing about it. I detest them.

I hate to badmouth any book or writer, because I know how it feels to be on the other end of that.

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

It's hard to judge literary merit.

If a work alienates a reader, should that be counted against it? I respect people that love 'Ulysses,' for example, but I'm on the other side of the argument. 'Ulysses' would be better if it seduced me. But I probably have the minority point of view.

When someone says to me, 'I love your book - I read it in a day,' I want to tell them to go back and read it again.

As an author, I love to know my book sells really well.

I can appreciate other writers' works.

'The Dublin Magazine' has been edited with good taste, and it is very agreeable reading, but to speak quite candidly, I do not believe in the future of any literary journal any more than I believe in the future of the Trinity.

When I pick up a book that's, you know, wreathed in laurels, I expect a lot, and that doesn't give the book its best chance to shine.

Some books are well-received with critics; other books sell.

I might defend the reviewing trade, but a handful of haughty hired hands no longer having the last word on books is not a bad thing.

If we lose sight of the fact that writing is entertainment, then writing is doomed.

People never read my books for the quality of the documentary value.