A Quote by James A. Michener

Only another writer, someone who had worked his heart out on a good book which sold three thousand copies, could appreciate the thrill that overcame me one April morning in 1973 when Dean Rivers of our small college in Georgia appeared at my classroom door

James A. Michener

Quote Topics

Another Appeared Appreciate April Book Classroom College Copies Could Dean Door Georgia Good Good Book Had Heart His Me Morning Only Our Out Overcame Rivers Small Sold Someone Thousand Three Thrill Which Worked Writer

Quote Author

James A. Michener
American - Writer
February 3, 1907 - October 16, 1997

Hollywood loves pre-validation. Even if someone has a property that was first published as a comic book that sold only 5,000 copies, for Hollywood, that is a stamp of approval. 'Oh, it was already published in another medium? Must be good!' They get assurance from knowing that someone else already took the risk.

David S. Goyer

I worked at car washes - two or three different car washes. I worked at McDonald's and Wendy's, I worked as a dishwasher and as a telemarketer in two or three different places. I sold windows door-to-door and never once sold a window.

Joseph Bruce

I'm from a small town in North Carolina and went to a small college and didn't think that someone like me could make a living in L.A. doing comedy. I worked hard, especially in college, but at that age, you don't know what's next.

Fortune Feimster

'The Squickerwonkers' was the story I wrote when I was on 'The Hobbit.' And I brought it to Comic-Con and sold out a thousand copies I had printed.

Evangeline Lilly

If I had written a book saying, 'Ladies, your life is terrible,' I would have sold three copies. It's always better to laugh people into recognition.

Allison Pearson

I had it in my head when I was in college that I wanted to be a writer, but it took me a long time to commit to being a writer. Up until then, I had worked one dead-end job after another while writing on the side.

Kate DiCamillo

In college, I wrote newspaper articles and songs. Then, on my 21st birthday, I sold my first book. It was a nonfiction book about women pirates - 'Pirates in Petticoats.' After that, I was a book writer for good.

Jane Yolen

We wanted to describe society from our Left point of view. Per had written political books, but they'd only sold 300 copies. We realised that people read crime and through the stories we could show the reader that under the official image of welfare-state Sweden there was another layer of poverty, criminality and brutality.

Maj Sjowall

Most novels put out by small or corporate presses don't really sell that well - usually a thousand copies or so. Working with a small press, you have to be willing to book reading tours, plan events, make contacts with other small press authors, and find new ways of getting word about your new work out there.

Joe Meno

When he at least reached the door the handle had cease to vibrate. Lowering himself suddenly to his knees he placed his head and the vagaries of his left eye (which was for ever trying to dash up and down the vertical surface of the door), he was able by dint of concentration to observe, within three inches of his keyholed eye, an eye which was not his, being not only of a different colour to his own iron marble, but being, which is more convincing, on the other side of the door.

Mervyn Peake

My dad was a scientist. More than that: my dad grew up in a tiny terraced house in Swansea, the only child of a second-generation immigrant family - his father sold cloth, zips and buttons from door to door - and so science - biochemistry at Swansea University, followed by a PhD at Imperial College - was his way out, his way up.

David Baddiel

A book is a door, you know. Always and forever. A book is a door into another place and another heart and another world.

Catherynne M. Valente

My father had four jobs every summer. He taught driver's education. He sold World Book Encyclopedias. He sold life insurance. He worked the tobacco market. From the time I was really, really small, I went with him. Obviously, I didn't get paid.

Kelvin Sampson

When I was fifteen I wrote seven hundred pages of an incredibly bad novel - it's a very funny book I still like a lot. Then, when I was nineteen I wrote a couple hundred pages of another novel, which wasn't very good either. I was still determined to be a writer. And since I was a writer, and here I was twenty-nine years old and I wasn't a very good poet and I wasn't a very good novelist, I thought I would try writing a play, which seems to have worked out a little better.

Edward Albee

Tom Paine was a great American visionary. His book, Common Sense, sold a couple of hundred thousand copies in a population of four or five million. That means it was a best seller for years. People were thoughtful then. Hope is one thing. But you need to have hope with thought.