Literary Achievement Quotes

Of course the success of A Boy's Own Story took me utterly off guard.

Anyone aspiring to literary greatness should read 'New Grub Street' and weep.

I couldn't have known 'Crank' was going to be published, let alone become a big hit. That book was very personal for me: I had to tell the story for myself.

Anyway, several rewrites later, Del Rey Books did publish my first novel, and it did become the first work of fiction on the New York Times trade paperback bestseller list.

Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is truly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation.

Of all the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books.

I wrote one book, signed with a good agent, and sat back and waited for the phone to ring. I was sure that the great news would come at any moment. Four books later, I finally got that call.

Making the best-seller list is a big deal; it's like being nominated for an Oscar. Hitting No. 1 is like actually winning the award. It's very gratifying.

I never set out to do this - getting to No. 1 in the 'New York Times' bestseller list wasn't even a pipedream.

It's great that in the German language I've sold almost 30 million books. Isn't that amazing?

Shakespeare was a man who wrote poetry. I'm a man who writes poetry. Why not compare yourself to the best?

I met Heinlein after 'The Forever War' had won the Hugo and Nebula Awards. He shook my hand and said he loved the book so much, he'd read it three times.

Every writer dreams of writing a book that will touch people.

I don't feel like a celebrity. Poetry justifies celebrity. It's good to have respect for a poet.

I was elated when I found out my first novel, 'Leaving Patrick,' about a woman who walks out on her husband, was going to be published.

You can look at the New York Times Bestseller List and you can be pretty sure that the writers on that list don't know each other very well.

I always knew writing a novel was a great thing.

Wikipedia's a collaborative experiment akin to Simon Winchester's account of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary in 'The Professor and the Madman,' which outlines James Murray's mission to produce the tome in the 19th century.

I had always presumed that my first book would be published, but I never dreamt that I would write 15 bestsellers and have this wonderful life in America that I have entirely built for myself.

I think I made my first short fiction sale in 2005. I had been writing unsuccessfully before that.

Say, Britain, could you ever boast, Three poets in an age at most? Our chilling climate hardly bears A sprig of bays in fifty years.

I published my first poem in 'The Paris Review' in 1980.

After I won the Newbery Medal for 'From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,' children all over the world let me know that they liked books that take them to unusual places where they meet unusual people.

I've been bragging for over 25 years that my first New York Times bestseller was a book I copied from the U.S. Government Printing Office!

When I was a teenager, I remember the extraordinary feeling of accomplishment for completing 'Vanity Fair.' I don't think it was even for school.