Bestsellers Quotes & Sayings

Negative books can be bestsellers, but seldom classics. — Mark Skousen

I'm always astonished when I go into Barnes & Noble at the number of people buying books, of course, but also at the variety of books they do buy and the extent to which they are not the big bestsellers. — Michael Korda

Freed from the sublimated form which was the very token of its irreconcilable dreams a form which is the style, the language in which the story is told sexuality turns into a vehicle for the bestsellers of oppression ... This society turns everything it touches into a potential source of progress and of exploitation, of drudgery and satisfaction, of freedom and of oppression. Sexuality is no exception. — Herbert Marcuse

It may sound like a bold statement for one to claim that he is the world's best at something but it's not an impossibility. I've done it many times, and so did Olympic athletes. It requires more boldness to distrust what I just said, as those who do won't read my books and access the reasons to why they're bestsellers. — Robin Sacredfire

Every day, we pay lip service to democratic values and then again and again make undemocratic choices in the marketplace. Bestsellers are bestsellers because we buy them: nothing more. — Lisa Adams

There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good stories seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky. — Stephen King

The Tipping Point is the biography of an idea, and the idea is very simple. It is that the best way to understand the emergence of fashion trends, the ebb and flow of crime waves, or, for that matter, the transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth, or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do. — Malcolm Gladwell

I grew up on a mixed diet of mass and class, and I still read that way. I hate it when people apologize for what they read. Some bestsellers aren't exactly literary. So what? They're fun and rip-roaring, Who instituted the book police and why do we have to answer them? Grrrrr! — Jennifer Donnelly

Those who would like to become writers attend courses on writing poetry and prose and analyze their own work and that of other writers in development. Teachers teach them that talent is not required and that anyone, who wants to be a writer, can do it if they only master the technique of writing and master the formulas of the genre that they choose. With a little brain storming ideas written on cards, as well as designs and plans on the table, one can even write a novel in a month. There is no secret; the whole secret is in the technique, a little research, and the rest is solved by form, according to a formula, in which it is all nicely wrapped up and packaged.
And so, a bestseller is born. — Dejan Stojanovic

The twenty-first chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change. There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in wisdom, operating in your chief character or characters. Even trashy bestsellers show people changing. When a fictional work fails to show change, when it merely indicates that human character is set, stony, unregenerable, then you are out of the field of the novel and into that of the fable or the allegory. — Anthony Burgess

Kitty Kelley's method, already perfected in her unauthorised and unflattering biographies of Frank Sinatra and Nancy Reagan, is to write bestsellers that take what she describes as an 'unblinking look' at their subjects - which might, of course, mean that her eyes are permanently open or permanently closed ... the result is a work so bad that Britons cannot realise how fortunate they are in being unable to buy it. The great mistake with this book is not that it has been published in Britain, but that it has actually been published anywhere else. — David Cannadine

I've always been fascinated by books. When I was young, my grandfather used to hand out a book - which would be anything from a biography to a classic - to me every week and ask me to write a piece on what I thought about it. On the other hand, my mother used to love reading thrillers and bestsellers. — Ashwin Sanghi

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. — Jane Green

The airport bookstore did not sell books, only bestsellers, which Sita Dulip cannot read without risking a severe systemic reaction. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I brought you something. It's my sister's coat. It
gets cold in Nashville in the wintertime. — Nancy B. Brewer

I would go to newsstands and buy paperbacks they were selling for tourists, usually bestsellers and mass market paperbacks. In the beginning, it was like going to the Rosetta Stone
I didn?t understand anything, I'd get a headache
but I began to figure it out, and I'd read a lot of Stephen King paperbacks. I've always said he was my English professor. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Like everywhere else in the world, the book stores of Britain are struggling with being pushed out of the market by online booksellers. The most popular book store chain in the UK is Waterstones. They are closing locations and cutting back as they lost business, but they aren't losing business as fast and as hard as the book stores in the US. There is one reason for this: sales. If you go into a book store in the UK, you will be greeted by tables covered with bestsellers and crime novels and other popular books, stacked high with signs saying "3 for £10". Take heed, American booksellers: people buy more things when you lower the price sometimes. People love a special offer. — Alana Muir

Don't listen to any advice from anybody who has fewer published bestsellers than you, or anybody with more bestsellers than you. Or anybody with the exact same number of bestsellers as you. Don't listen to any advice at all, even this advice I'm telling you right now. — Dan Alatorre

We are living in a time in which movies such as 'Super Size Me' and 'An Inconvenient Truth' have made box-office history, and books such as 'No Logo' and my own, 'The Silent Takeover,' are bestsellers. — Noreena Hertz

Advances have fallen, generally, for everything except the biggest potential bestsellers. Given all the changes, both economic and technological, SF hasn't done too badly. — Alan Dean Foster

Being an author isn't just about making money or hitting the Amazon Bestsellers list, it's about the positive impact you and your stories make in peoples lives. Even if it's just one person. — Shannon Eckrich

It'll take a while for all those strange old books that I love to show up on digital: books that aren't current bestsellers but aren't public-domain freebies, either. — Barbara Hambly

Reading fiction - excerpts from National Book Award finalists, winners of the Pen/O. Henry Prize for short stories, or even Amazon bestsellers - has been shown to enhance theory of mind: — Margaret Heffernan

When Paris Hilton can top the bestsellers' lists, we are one more Connect Four move closer to Armageddon. — Corey Taylor

The bands I like, they don't sell too many records and the girls I like, they don't kiss too many boys. Books I read will never be bestsellers yeah but come on fellas at least we made our choice. — Frank Turner

Crime isn't pretty, only fashionably dressed. — S.W. Frank

It's like, you write a book, you want it to be well received, you want it to be at the top of the bestsellers list, but you have limited control over what happens. You can hire a publicist, you can do every interview, you can be prepared, but you have very little control over the marketplace. So you put it out there without attachment, so it has its own life. Everything is like that. — Dan Harris

Writers, naturally, dream of becoming authors. Authors dream of writing a bestseller. Bestselling authors want to write more bestsellers. And everyone hopes for big prizes. Why? Because we believe in magic. Publisher's Weekly magazine, Dec. 12, 2011 — Amy Hill Hearth

The Fiction Writer's Co-op has 51 members, from celebrated NYT bestsellers to promising newcomers, and a waiting list. — M.J. Rose

When you start a new job or a particular journey, you really don't know what to expect. I mean, you hear about your name being on the bestsellers list, but it doesn't really mean anything. Like, really, what does that translate to? — Eric Jerome Dickey

I felt really lucky that 'Hairstyles Of The Damned' and 'The Boy Detective Fails' were both bestsellers, and I thought that donating the money from 'Demons' was a good way to respond to that. My favorite artists are the ones that are willing to experiment, even if it means a smaller audience. — Joe Meno

I don't know how many bestsellers I've got, or half the awards I've won, and I don't really care. I'm just having fun, doing something I love and getting paid for it. How cool is that? — R.A. Salvatore

Take what fame or fortune comes your way. My first bestseller was a cookbook, so remember to be open to trying new things. From that experience I learned things about marketing a book that benefitted me greatly and, combined with my sales management experience with Fortune 500 companies, I was able to launch a string of bestsellers. — Dan Alatorre

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

A bestseller is a book written by a rich person of Indian roots staying in Europe for more than a decade.. — Himmilicious

My mother belonged to that group of low IQ individuals who find everything alarming and believe that raising your voice is the most effective form of communication. — Annabelle R. Charbit

Soon after publishing a book for kids, my mailbox began to fill with letters from children all across America. Not because my novels for young readers are bestsellers - they're not by a long shot - but because today's kids love to write to authors. — Rodman Philbrick

The resulting scrambling to get the next big shiver and shake novel produced some really terrible books. As a further result, the wave had begun to withdraw by the mid 70s, and more traditional bestsellers began to re-appear: stories of sex, big business, sex, spies, gay sex, doctors in trouble, kinky sex, historical romances, sexy celebrities, war stories, and sex. — Stephen King

I am more excited about 'Divinity of Doubt: The God Question' than any other book in my entire career, and I've had seven New York Times bestsellers, three of them reaching number one. — Vincent Bugliosi

With both agents and publishers hungry for bestsellers, literature will have to end up as a cottage industry. — Anthony Burgess

In a world of watered-down bestsellers and formula novels, Hitching to Nirvana eases back just enough to show the blade which cuts the real open, then bolts forward again, giving us a charged, swerving dance to self-actualization. Hitching to Nirvana is a magnetic forcefield, not just pulling us beautifully into the story, but into our own lives. It's rare when a writer can open the shared world with such a deft, personal touch. Janet Mason is a genius. — CA Conrad