Quotes & Sayings About Best Sellers

I haven't won any prizes or had any best sellers. — Glen Duncan

For centuries censorship has created best sellers because, as Michel de Montaigne said, 'To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind for it.' (Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature) — Margaret Bald

I think it's a fallacy to say that a good book sells itself. It doesn't happen. I'm a voracious reader and I can give you a long list of books which should have been best sellers but they aren't. How can you buy a book if you haven't heard of it? — Amish Tripathi

This book is written in
a barren period of loss with an attempt to move forward towards substance. — Phindiwe Nkosi

The biographies and autobiographies are on the whole more impressive than the fiction of the last two decades, but the freakish best sellers among them are least likely to withstand the test of time. — Harold Acton

The ragged curtains were reaching out across the room and the foot of the bed was soaked with rain. She got up and closed the window to protect her from the storm outside. However, there was no protection from the storm that was always brewing in her mind. — Nancy B. Brewer

Readers often tell me after they've read the books, they find it difficult to sum up the plot in a simple way. My response is, "It's a story about the love a father shares for his daughter. All the rest is just filler."
- MJ Mancini, on his best-selling trilogy, "Revelation". — M.J. Mancini

Seriously, when you see a new book fresh on the stand and in big letters it says "A Million Copies Sold," did you ever wonder who bought them? — Stanley Victor Paskavich

Some books and authors are best sellers, but most aren't. It may be easier to self-publish than it is to traditionally publish, but in all honesty, it's harder to be a best seller self-publishing than it is with a house. — Amanda Hocking

Well, for people who want to write best sellers, the best advice I can give is to say that the novel has to engage the reader emotionally. — Ken Follett

Like many popular best-sellers, he was a very sad and solemn man who took himself too seriously and his art not seriously enough. — V.S. Pritchett

One cannot judge by book being best seller. We all know that. Many best sellers are terrible trash. — Philip K. Dick

Eventually, as my books became best-sellers, the nickels pile up and one
day I was offered a substantial four-book deal that was lucrative as any airliner hijacking in history. Though writing those four books was hard work, at least I didn't have to wear Kevlar body armor, carry heavy bandoliers of spare ammunition, or work with associates named Mad Dog. — Dean Koontz

Most best-sellers are written for readers who are willing to be passive consumers. The blurbs on their covers often highlight the coercive, aggressive power of the text - compulsive page-turner, gut-wrenching, jolting, mind-searing, heart-stopping - what is this, electroshock torture? — Ursula K. Le Guin

Being a famous writer is great. But there is a limit for it. For what extend can you be famous, and what would you achieve? True, your books will be best sellers, your blog writings and tweets will be hits, fans will love you, and what next? We all die to reach 'there' as budding writers, but once we reach 'it', we think, what next? Is this what we wanted all our lives? To grab all the leading awards, write best sellers, to be loved, to be known and heard? Will they help us achieve inner peace? I believe the utmost important thing is achieving inner peace, not money and fame. A writer should write to achieve inner peace forgetting all other things. Money, fame, fans are not going to last forever, but inner peace is. — Ama H. Vanniarachchy

It's a ridiculous profession and it's getting worse. It's becoming almost like palm reading or phrenology. It's been relegated to pop best sellers and talk shows. The only people that take it seriously are upper middle class people who are lonely and can afford to pay someone to listen to them. — Ian Shoales

If you take skinny jeans - skinny jeans didn't just happen in the US, they were happening in Japan, they were happening in the UK, they were happening everywhere. Some places a little faster than others. But, if we look at our best sellers in this store, they're the same best sellers that we have in the States. — Paul Weller

I was an early adopter of the 'Hunger Games.' I read them before they were best sellers - I was on the pre-order wait list for 'Mockingjay' on Amazon. — Elizabeth Banks

No question, your best times as a cook are the chef de partie years. Chef in charge of a section. It's the best and hardest job in the kitchen. — Tom Sellers

None of my books are best-sellers. In fact, the only thing that's kept me alive is the books that are in paperback. People find them, they like them, and they pass them on. — James Purdy

The cover is alluring. The beginning may be enthralling. But there's no culmination and no happy ending. So I sagely advise you to stop chaptering. I'm badly written."
His nose met mine. "Give me the rights, and I'll edit and rewrite. Polish you to perfection. But you won't make best sellers, for you'll never be published. You will be on my shelf only. — S. Ann Cole

However, unlike some of my friends and students, I don't think it's a laughing matter. I think it is frightening to see what outrageous stories can be told in the United States and then are accepted by many educated people and academics as facts. Movies get awards, books become best sellers, heroes are made, and people become wealthy as a result of dishonest caricatures of Iranian people and society. — Mohammad Marandi

We also sold books, creating several best sellers and helping to put unknown authors on the map. — Howard Schultz

Universal was absolutely marvelous about sitting down with me and listening to my input. It wasn't something where they chose a bunch of songs that were best sellers. They did a marvelous job on the packaging. It's a beautiful tribute. — Rita Coolidge

When I thought about it, though, what I liked best about the session was that Helder said fuck. A good, hard word, a word with a life of its own, a fearless word. A rent in the dry elegance. Fuck. — Heather Sellers

Today the U.S. is farther from being nourished by poetry than it was a hundred years ago, when books of poems were best-sellers. — James Broughton

It is possible to argue that the really influential book is not that which converts ten millions of casual readers, but rather that which converts the very few who, at any given moment, succeed in seizing power. Marx and Sorel have been influential in the modern world, not so much because they were best-sellers (Sorel in particular was not at all a widely read author), but because among their few readers were two men, called respectively Lenin and Mussolini. — Aldous Huxley

If we were a sex manual it'd be a best-seller. — Rick Carlisle

Sometimes management thinks it must determine a minimum acceptable price upfront. This is not possible when selling an intangible company. The price, the real price, is determined by the market and not by any other means. I suggest to sellers that they not worry so much about the valuation right now but rather that we go out to the market, contact all the good buyers, get offers, and negotiate the best price that we can and then accept the highest offer. People — Thomas Metz

Rock critics are often totally ignorant of the rock music of the past, they barely know the best sellers. No wonder they will think that the Beatles did anything worth of being saved. — Piero Scaruffi

Kids don't know about best sellers. They go for what they enjoy. They aren't star chasers and they don't suck up. It's why I like them. — Maurice Sendak

Only a person with a Best Seller mind can write Best Sellers. — Aldous Huxley

Today we hear a great deal about Organizational Men, Mass Culture, Conformity, the Lonely Crowd, the Power Elite and its Conspiracy of Mediocrity. We forget that the very volume of this criticism is an indication that our society is still radically pluralistic. Not only are there plenty of exceptionalists who take exception to the stereotyping of the mass culture but that very string of epithets comes from a series of books that have been recent best-sellers, symptoms of a popular, living tradition of dissent from things as they are. — Kenneth Rexroth

I think of myself as a bad writer with big ideas, but I'd rather be that than a big writer with bad ideas. — Michael Moorcock

Writing isn't generally a lucrative source of income; only a few, exceptional writers reach the income levels associated with the best-sellers. Rather, most of us write because we can make a modest living, or even supplement our day jobs, doing something about which we feel passionately. Even at the worst of times, when nothing goes right, when the prose is clumsy and the ideas feel stale, at least we're doing something that we genuinely love. There's no other reason to work this hard, except that love. — Melissa Scott

Hacks are killing our national literary culture. America treats best-sellers like literary lions and literary lions worse than stray dogs. — David B. Lentz

Read everything. Read fiction and non-fiction, read hot best sellers and the classics you never got around to in college. — Jennifer Weiner

Human attention is limited, and a massive number of newly browsable books from the long tail necessarily compete with the biggest best-sellers, just as cable siphons audience from the major networks, and just as the Web pulls viewers from TV. — Gary Wolf

The White Queen in many ways it is representative of the sort of drama that I'm talking about. The books by Philippa Gregory were best sellers and they specifically told the story of history from the point of view of women. — Colin Callender

Writing a NYT bestseller was a delightful experience. But there are many books which are read by few that should be read and reread by many, as well as books bought by many that are hardly worth the ink. — Ron Brackin

I think it may not be a coincidence that the rise of printing and book publication and literacy and the phenomenon of best sellers all preceded the humanitarian reforms of the Enlightenment. — Steven Pinker

Don't just read books that are best-sellers or books that you agree with, challenge your own thinking as you're reading. — Rowena Crosbie

Frank Halford was a master at the school and remembers Adams as "very tall even then, and popular. He wrote an end-of-term play when Doctor Who had just started on television. He called it 'Doctor Which.' " Many years later, Adams did write scripts for Doctor Who. He describes Halford as an inspirational teacher who is still a support. "He once gave me ten out of ten for a story, which was the only time he did throughout his long school career. And even now, when I have a dark night of the soul as a writer and think that I can't do this anymore, the thing that I reach for is not the fact that I have had best-sellers or huge advances. It is the fact that Frank Halford once gave me ten out of ten, and at some fundamental level I must be able to do it. — Douglas Adams

I'm contemplating if book sales and promotions can actually be rigged like so many other things in our everyday lives? — Stanley Victor Paskavich

Instead of buying into that negative self-talk, state what you intend to invite into your life each day. Be as specific as possible. When I stated my intention of becoming a Best-Selling Author, I didn't know HOW I would do it. I just stated my intention and desire with certainty. Before I knew it, I started to manifest what I intended to attract and the "how" showed up. The right people at the right time came into my life. Within one year, my book, Me, Myself, and Why? The Secrets to Navigating Change, was sitting on the Best Sellers List. That's what happens when you state an intention. It sparks a series of events bringing your intention into reality. — Lisa A. Mininni

10 years ago [in 2006], nearly 90 percent of those albums sold enough in that year to reach Gold status. 10 years later, about 30 percent were eligible. With the new rules, we figure about 40 percent of the top 200 best-sellers for the year will be eligible. We were very cautious in our approach to changing how we calculate what is eligible because the integrity of the process is our foremost consideration. It's difficult to get certified sales awards, and it's a big deal and we didn't want there to be a huge change in how many would be eligible. — Cary Sherman

Once you've read too many trashy best-sellers, you begin to look for something with substance, something that attempts to define the universe. — Jessica Zafra

Idiot America is a strange, disordered place. Everything is on the wrong shelves. The truth of something is defined by how many people will attest to it, and facts are defined by those people's fervency. Fiction and nonfiction are defined by how well they sell. The best sellers are on one shelf, cheek by jowl, whether what's contained in them is true or not. People wander blindly, following the Gut into dark corners and aisles that lead nowhere, confusing possibilities with threats, jumping at shadows, stumbling around. They trip over piles of fiction left strewn around the floor of the nonfiction aisles. They fall down. They land on other people, and those other people can get hurt. — Charles P. Pierce

Excellence is THE trend of the '80s. Walk into any shopping mall bookstore, go to the rack where they keep the best-sellers such as Garfield Gets Spayed, and you'll see a half-dozen books telling you how to be excellent: In Search of Excellence, Finding Excellence, Grasping Hold of Excellence, Where to Hide Your Excellence at Night So the Cleaning Personnel Don't Steal It, etc. — Dave Barry

One recalls how much the creative impulse of the best-sellers depends upon self-pity. It is an emotion of great dramatic potential. — V.S. Pritchett

Because Life is too Serious to be Taken Seriously. — Anonymous

finding in motion, what was once in place — Brian Heffron

It is possible to live well with dementia and write best-sellers 'like wot I do. — Terry Pratchett

If the poets offered us nothing more than another make-believe world, they would be mere sellers of drugs or, at best, sweetmeats. — Robert Lynd

I have a great book. It's called Stantasyland. Except I don't have the money to buy a million copies to put it on the bestsellers list. — Stanley Victor Paskavich