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.
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.
We couldn't predict what would happen with 'Roots.' You knew there were powerful moments that were going to affect people. We were making the film while the book was being completed. We were fortunate because the hardcover book was out and on the best-seller list. The heat was still on.
It was like we were exchanging codes, on how to be a father and a daughter, like we'd read about it in a manual, translated from another language, and were doing our best with what we could understand.
The best unpaid sex, where you and the woman are really into each other, and there's a lot of really intense passion, and things are really hot between you...I've never had that kind of sex when I was paying for it. The best unpaid sex is going to be, I think, more passionate and more hot than the best paid sex.
No, we didn't shoot... in the ones that I did there were hardly any sex... there were suggestions of sex scenes but we never actually shot a sex scene as such.
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.
Tourism provides employment to the poorest of the poor. Gram seller earns something, auto-rickshaw driver earns something, pakoda seller earns something, and tea seller also earns something.
There's been million-seller books and million-seller CDs. But there hasn't been, until now, million-seller art.
Only a person with a Best Seller mind can write Best Sellers.
The best thing about doing a signing tour is that numbers become faces. I got to sign books for six or seven thousand people, all of whom were dreadfully nice. Everything else, the interviews, the hotels, the plane travel, the best-seller lists, even the sushi, gets old awfully fast. Well, maybe not the sushi.
If you had a daily printout from the brain of an average twenty-four-year-old male, it would probably go like this: sex, need coffee, sex, traffic, sex, sex, what an asshole, sex, ham sandwich, sex, sex, etc
In many joyfully-admired recent novels, love appears as little more than sex-manual instruction.
Yet, if the most frequent sex and apparently the best sex is that between married partners who are faithful to one another, is there not a hint that affection might be an important aspect of sex? Even love?
I grew up having to do manual labor because people always told me that I was an ugly girl. I've never had the permission to be myself except for when I'm doing manual labor. Because in manual labor, it's about, 'Can you pick this up, can you move this here,' and I could.
I don't think you could have a 7 with a manual. But I can't see having a BMW sports sedan without a manual.