A Quote by James Patterson

I'm very conscious that I'm an entertainer. Something like 73 percent of my readers are college graduates, so you can't condescend to people. You've got to tell them a story that they will be willing to pay money to read.
I always tell people there's only one trick to writing: You have to write something that people are willing to pay money to read. It doesn't have to be very good, necessarily, but somebody, somewhere, has got to be willing to pay money for it.
America picks up 73 percent of the cost of NATO. We're paying to protect them. Wouldn't it be nice if people would pay, and we could do things properly? That's got to change.
I read on the front page of the Wall Street Journal that NATO is opening up a major terror division. And I think that's great. And I think we should get - because we pay approximately 73 percent of the cost of NATO. It's a lot of money to protect other people.
If you’re not familiar with it, a college degree is a thing that we tell our kids to buy with money they don’t have, in hopes that it will help them make money they might earn, which will give them the ability to pay back the money they spent in order to make the money they’re paying it back with.
I don't tell a story unless I have a very deep bench. If you tell an idiosyncratic story, there's no resonance. People read it and say, "I don't see anyone like that." So I tell a story only when I have many stories behind it.
Nate Silver says this is a 73.6 percent chance that the president is going to win. Nobody in that campaign thinks they have a 73 — they think they have a 50.1 percent chance of winning. And you talk to the Romney people, it’s the same thing.
In Burma, we have only about four percent of the people in our country who are (college) graduates. So can we not value the majority? No, we must. If we just value the graduates, then does that mean our people are not valuable? I don't believe that. What is important is we need right people in right positions.
The main thing is to think strategically about what will engage your readers. Trust me when I tell you that few people are eager to read a story whose opening lines sound like a dissertation on giant bugs.
I think you tell the story that has to be told. You tell the story that's the truth. You tell the story that readers will be interested in and should know about.
I consider myself conscious of how women are treated, and sometimes I can be a feminist. Sometimes I'm a little Republican, sometimes I'm a little Democrat. Sometimes I'm angry, sometimes I'm not angry. I'm not a total feminist, but I believe in rights for females. I believe that if we have to pay 100 percent for our college tuition, and then we get into the workplace and we're only given 70 percent of our counterparts' salaries, then we shouldn't have to pay but 70 percent of our college tuition. Maybe that'll stop the bullshit.
I tell the songwriter's story. When I read people's lyrics, I'm so amazed. I want to tell this story and make it part of my life. I usually can't write lyrics down, but I can sure tell that story. You've got to make people feel the hurt and love in each song.
It's hard to tell if anyone's interested in reading a serialized story. But it's interesting to put in a cliffhanger each week. That was popular in old comic strips. They'd write a weekend story different from the daily strip. So people follow one story day to day, and a separate story on weekends. If you read them, you think "I'll read two more." Then you're like "I gotta find out!" And you read 500 more.
In high school, I got into a speech class run by a nun who used to put on plays. She put me in a oratorical competitive program. You would tell a story, and they were very corny, something like 'My Childhood Hero.' It was something out of 'Readers Digest.' I always thought it was too much and too dramatic.
I want 100 percent of customers to like MyPillow and 100 percent of people to be taken care of. If you help someone, they tell two people, they tell 20 people, they tell 200 people, and the money takes care of itself.
I also like to use a sensational headline. Many people read blogs in aggregators, which generally show only the headline. So you have to give people a reason to click through. Blogs need to be real and personal. Reading it should be like hanging out with you. I play music for my readers. I show them videos I like. I tell them what I did over the weekend. And I tell them what is happening in the technology, Internet, and VC markets.
42% of college graduates never read a book after college.
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