Author Rivalry Quotes

The reason Saul Bellow doesn't talk to me anymore is because he knows his new novels are not worth reading.

Hemingway hated me. I sold 200 million books, and he didn't. Of course most of mine sold for 25 cents, but still... you look at all this stuff with a grain of salt.

If I see Marian Keyes' books or Patricia Scanlan's books given more prominence than mine in the bookstore, I'll move mine to the front. I've told them I do this, and they've confessed to doing the same thing to me.

What's not realized about good novelists is that they're as competitive as good athletes. They study each other - where the other person is good and where the person is less good. Writers are like that but don't admit it.

To choose a writer for a friend is like palling around with your cardiologist, who might be musing as you talk to him that you are a sinking man. A writer's love for another writer is never quite free of malice. He may enjoy discussing your failures even more than you do. He probably sees you as tragic, like his characters - or unworthy of tragedy, which is worse.

The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.

Eat your heart out, Rowling. Maybe you have billions of dollars and my Hugo, but you don't have readers like these.

Writers are as jealous as pigeons.

It's very hard to turn writers against each other, believe it or not.

Authors are like cattle going to a fair: those of the same field can never move on without butting one another.