Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.
I prefer dead writers because you don't run into them at parties.
If the day gets really bad, I can always pull out fan mail. Who else gets mail where kids write to you and say, 'Dear Mr. Scieszka, we were supposed to write to our favorite author, but Roald Dahl is dead. So I'm writing to you.'
The first thing that put me on the map was my Sherlock Holmes novel.
I'm always surprised when large numbers of people buy my books.
Before publishers' blurbs were invented, authors had to make their reputations by writing.
People talk of me as being the inventor of the legal thriller.
Unless you are Stephen King, a book signing is attended by maybe 40 or 50 people.
The shelf life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yogurt.
This is the great thing about writing for kids. Adults might not do anything if they recognized me. But if they do see me, and they're with a kid, they'll tell the kid who I am. They think they should give that to the kid. So generally that sends the kid over.
No one knows why books do well.
People are certainly impressed by the aura of creative power which a writer may wear, but can easily demolish it with a few well-chosen questions. Bob Shaw has observed that the deadliest questions usually come as a pair: "Have you published anything?" - loosely translated as: I've never heard of you - and "What name do you write under?" - loosely translatable as: I've definitely never heard of you.
The thing about literature is that, yes, there are kind of tides of fashion, you know; people come in and out of fashion; writers who are very celebrated fall into, you know, people you know stop reading them, and then it comes back again.
It's been said that I am the most widely read writer of the 20th century. The number of books I've sold runs into untold millions.
Often I go to book festivals and they just turn authors into celebrities.'
I am not really much interested in talking to adults, although I suppose practically every mother in the kingdom knows my name and my books. It's their children I love.
Truman Capote was a pop figure, but it wasn't until he went on David Susskind's show and had that extraordinary voice and manner that everyone could imitate, that he really took off as a figure.
I think it would be bad to a truly successful celebrity person, because I know these novelists where people get a cult following, and they have some strange personal attachment to them because it's so personal to read a book.
I'm a cult writer now. I have a cult readership.
