A Quote by Frank McCourt

It's like a series of waves hitting you. First, getting excerpted in the 'New Yorker' last summer, then getting published, then the best-seller list, the award, the movie deal, now this, a Pulitzer.

Frank McCourt

Quote Topics

Award Best Deal First Getting Hitting Last Last Summer Like List Movie New New York New Yorker Now Published Pulitzer Seller Series Summer Then Waves Yorker

Quote Author

Frank McCourt
Irish - Author
August 19, 1930 - July 19, 2009

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.

Brad Thor

I was first published in the newspaper put out by School of The Art Institute of Chicago, where I was a student. I wince to read that story nowadays, but I published it with an odd photo I'd found in a junk shop, and at least I still like the picture. I had a few things in the school paper, and then I got published in a small literary magazine. I hoped I would one day get published in The New Yorker, but I never allowed myself to actually believe it. Getting published is one of those things that feels just as good as you'd hoped it would.

David Sedaris

When I wrote the first Betsy book, 'Undead and Unwed,' I had no idea, none, that it would be a career-defining, genre-defining book, the first of over a dozen in the series, the first of over 70 published books, the first on my road to the best-seller list, the first on my road to being published in 15 countries.

MaryJanice Davidson

Getting married and then having children just centered me and grounded my values. It was like a whole new world. It started happening in New York with a little play called Cruise Control, where I relaxed, and then I kept getting work in Hollywood till this series happened.

Patricia Richardson

Harper Lee's novel 'To Kill a Mockingbird' became iconic almost immediately after appearing in 1960: best-seller status; the Pulitzer Prize the next year; a classic movie soon after, with Gregory Peck in an Academy Award-winning role.

Kevin Young

'Royal Beatings' was my first story, and it was published in 1977. But I sent all my early stories to 'The New Yorker' in the 1950s, and then I stopped sending for a long time and sent only to magazines in Canada. 'The New Yorker' sent me nice notes, though - penciled, informal messages. They never signed them. They weren't terribly encouraging.

Alice Munro

What I do know is how difficult it is in this industry to get a show on the air. There's so many different stages: getting a script bought by the network, then getting a pilot made and having that pilot go to series, and then, when that series gets on the air, having people watch it.

Daniel Dae Kim

Heinlein never had a best-seller. Even, I think, with Stranger in a Strange Land, I don't think it was actually on the New York Times best seller list.

Jerry Pournelle

It felt like a series of coincidences and luck that I ended up getting the part in 'Trainspotting,' but it's been an incredible journey since then. Every now and then, I sit and really think about it, and it blows my mind. I have to stop because I don't want my brain to implode.

Kelly Macdonald

Too often, these comedy guys now only care about getting on and then getting off and getting rich.

Mort Sahl

I think I got spoiled and that writing a short story and getting it published, or writing a novel and getting it published, you pretty much get to do the first, second and third draft yourself without a whole lot of interference.

John Sayles

If I can hit No. 1 on the 'New York Times' best-seller list, I'm thinking of having the entire list tattooed on my body somewhere. It would be fabulous.

Camilla Lackberg

Everything going through my head was like, "Just last month or so, I was just flying into L.A. and things were just getting started with recording my album, and then here it is, wow, boom, here I am in a movie." And then with Leonardo DiCaprio! The whole experience was cool and that moment was so epic for me.

Quindon Tarver

Suppose a number of equal waves of water to move upon the surface of a stagnant lake, with a certain constant velocity, and to enter a narrow channel leading out of the lake. Suppose then another similar cause to have excited another equal series of waves, which arrive at the same time, with the first. Neither series of waves will destroy the other, but their effects will be combined.