A Quote by Mark Haddon

If you're trying to be a successful writer, and you go into a second-hand bookshop, it's the graveyard of people whose books haven't been wanted.

Mark Haddon

Quote Topics

Been Books Go Graveyard Hand People Second Second-Hand Successful Trying Wanted Whose Writer

Quote Author

Mark Haddon
English - Novelist
Born: September 26, 1962

I wasn't a kid who wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a doctor. I was kind of morbid. I was really into the body and how it could go wrong. I wanted to dig up bodies from the graveyard.

Jennifer Egan

To stand in a great bookshop crammed with books so new that their pages almost stick together, and the gilt on their backs is still fresh, has an excitement no less delightful than the old excitement of the second-hand bookstall.

Virginia Woolf

This is my year of transition from what I'm calling the second phase of my life to the third phase of my life. And I wanted to pass it along. What I mean by that is, in the first days of your life you're dependent on others and you learn. You're basically a kid, depending on your parents. In the second phase of your life, you're working and others are dependent on you and you're trying to be successful. And then when you go to the third phase of your life it's no longer as much of a kick to be successful. There's a natural, instinctual desire to help other people be successful.

Ray Dalio

My mother used to take my brother and me to get any books we wanted, but they were second hand books published in the '30s and '40s. I liked scary books.

Alejandro Amenabar

A perfect treat must include a trip to a second-hand bookshop.

Virginia Woolf

Certainly, light fiction exists and encompasses mysteries or second-class romance novels, books that are read on the beach, whose only aim is to entertain. These books are not concerned with style or creativity - instead they are successful because they are repetitive and follow a template that readers enjoy.

Umberto Eco

These have been the most successful years I've ever had. I've been placing well in the contests but more importantly I've been enjoying them. I think those two things go hand-in-hand.

Kelly Clark

In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.

Mark Twain

Aziraphale collected books. If he were totally honest with himself he would have to have admitted that his bookshop was simply somewhere to store them. He was not unusual in this. In order to maintain his cover as a typical second-hand book seller, he used every means short of actual physical violence to prevent customers from making a purchase. Unpleasant damp smells, glowering looks, erratic opening hours - he was incredibly good at it.

Terry Pratchett

Boozing does not necessarily have to go hand in hand with being a writer. . .I therefore solemnly declare to all young men trying to become writers that they do not actually have to become drunkards first.

Nelson W. Aldrich

I never wanted to be a celebrity writer. I wanted to be a good writer. I'm still trying to be a good writer. That's what gets me out of bed in the morning.

Thomas McGuane

Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.

Virginia Woolf

Do not make the writer stand behind a podium. Anything but. A podium reeks of the lecture hall. A music stand, on the other hand, is nicely minimal and lends the writer - who usually needs all the help s/he can get - a musician's second-hand cool-factor.

Lynn Coady

I think that comics and television, as mediums, go hand in hand. Both tell long-form, continuing stories that are parsed out into little chapters and, if are successful, continue for years and years. What that means to me, as a writer, is it tells stories of transformation and evolution as characters.

Robert Kirkman

By the time I got to college I had stopped reading books because I wanted to "be cool" and started reading books simply because I wanted to read them. I discovered heroes like Roth, King, Dahl, Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, TC Boyle, Douglas Adams, Neil Gaiman, David Sedaris. These people weren't trying to "rebel against the literary establishment." They were trying to write great, high-quality books that were as entertaining and moving as possible.