A Quote by Norman Mailer

Over-certified adjectives are the mark of most best-seller writing

Norman Mailer

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Adjectives Best Certified Mark Most Over Seller Writing

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Norman Mailer
American - Novelist
January 31, 1923 - November 10, 2007

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

In the twentieth century our highest praise is to call the Bible 'The World's Best Seller.' And it has come to be more and more difficult to say whether we think it is a best seller because it is great, or vice versa.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Virtually every beginning poet hurts himself by an addiction to adjectives. Verbs are by far the most important things for poems-especially wonderful tough monosyllables like "gasp" and "cry." Nouns are the next most important. Adjectives tend to be useless.

Donald Hall

Whenever you talk about writing I think you have to remember that it all has a big question mark over it - every word has a big question mark over it.

George Saunders

I ain't no author, man . . . my writing skills are not of "New York Times" best-seller quality, trust and believe it ain't. My vocabulary ain't.

Steve Harvey

I ain't no author, man... my writing skills are not of 'New York Times' best-seller quality, trust and believe it ain't. My vocabulary ain't.

Steve Harvey

I think that feels like it to me. I mean whenever you talk about writing I think you have to remember that it all has a big question mark over it - every word has a big question mark over it.

George Saunders

There is only one recipe for a best seller and it is a very simple one. You have to get the reader to turn over the page.

Ian Fleming

Of course I want to be a best seller because I'm in the business and I want to be read, but there is no money in the world that can compensate for writing badly.

David Lagercrantz

It's a feeling of happiness that knocks me clean out of adjectives. I think sometimes that the best reason for writing novels is to experience those four and a half hours after you write the final word.

Zadie Smith

I am always interested in why young people become writers, and from talking with many I have concluded that most do not want to be writers working eight and ten hours a day and accomplishing little; they want to have been writers, garnering the rewards of having completed a best-seller. They aspire to the rewards of writing but not to the travail.

James A. Michener

But the adjectives change,” said Jimmy. “Nothing’s worse than last year’s adjectives.

Margaret Atwood

Some books and authors are best sellers, but most aren't. It may be easier to self-publish than it is to traditionally publish, but in all honesty, it's harder to be a best seller self-publishing than it is with a house.

Amanda Hocking

No one can write a best seller by trying to. He must write with complete sincerity; the clichés that make you laugh, the hackneyed characters, the well-worn situations, the commonplace story that excites your derision, seem neither hackneyed, well worn nor commonplace to him. ... The conclusion is obvious: you cannot write anything that will convince unless you are yourself convinced. The best seller sells because he writes with his heart's blood.

W. Somerset Maugham

If you see our best seller list, most of them are books that are given as gifts. They are books you give to flatter somebody.

John Gimlette

I'm not Abdul-Jabbar or Pat Ewing or Mark Eaton. I'm Shawn Bradley and I'm going to do my best each time I step on the court. When the game is over, it's over.

Shawn Bradley

A Quote by Norman Mailer

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