John McCarthy Quotes

Asking a critic to name his favorite book is like asking a butcher to name his favorite pig.

John McCarthy

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Quotes to Explore

• Hands down, the biggest thrill is to get a letter from a kid saying, I loved your book. Will you write me another one?

  

  Kate DiCamillo
  • Book
  • Hands
  • Saying

• A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.

  

  W. H. Auden
  • Real
  • Book
  • U.S.

• I've planned book tours for myself, whether or not anybody wants to hear what I have to say. I've weighed in on things like what the cover looks like, what the copy looks like, how it's going to be promoted - just every aspect of it.

  

  Adam Mansbach
  • Book
  • Myself
  • Copy

• I read a lot of comic books and any kind of thing I could find. One day, a teacher found me. She grabbed my comic book and tore it up. I was really upset, but then she brought in a pile of books from her own library. That was the best thing that ever happened to me.

  

  Walter Dean Myers
  • Up
  • She
  • Book

• I never want to write a book just to tell a story. There is always something deeper going on.

  

  Karin Slaughter
  • Book
  • Want
  • Story

• I enjoy it too much - even if I knew I'd never get a book published, I would still write. I enjoy the experience of getting thoughts and ideas and plots and characters organised into this narrative framework.

  

  Iain Banks
  • Experience
  • Book
  • Ideas

• I know from an editor's point of view or a publisher's point of view it's easier to slot me into a particular niche. But I know that I'd be bored unless I wrote a book that in some senses was a challenge.

  

  Vikram Seth
  • Book
  • Me
  • Challenge

• Everyone's clamoring for the fourth book in the 'Fifty Shades' trilogy, which makes me laugh. Just the part of 'a fourth book in trilogy' that makes me laugh, not the clamoring for the next book.

  

  E. L. James
  • Book
  • Me
  • Laugh

• I have become infected, now that I see how beautifully a book is coming out of all this.

  

  Carl Sandburg
  • Book
  • See
  • Now

• It's easier to release an ebook than a print book.

  

  J. A. Konrath
  • Book
  • Easier
  • Print

• Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world.

  

  Malala Yousafzai
  • World
  • Book
  • Remember

• 'Perfect' is about a set-up that looks perfect from the outside - beautiful country house, beautiful wife and mother, everything where it should be - and the deep fissures that, in fact, lie beneath that. 'Perfect' was partly a response to the shock of my first book, 'The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry,' being a success.

  

  Rachel Joyce
  • Up
  • Country
  • Book

• A tactic used by authors of virtually every single book I've ever read that propounds a conspiracy theory is to attack an agency as being part of a conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination, but when this same agency comes up with something favorable to the author's position, the author will cite that same agency as credible support for his argument.

  

  Vincent Bugliosi
  • Up
  • Book
  • Support

• I don't really know what the Great American Novel is. I like the idea that there could be one now, and I wouldn't object if someone thought it was mine, but I don't claim to have written that - I just wrote my book.

  

  Rachel Kushner
  • Great
  • Book
  • American

• I have considered rap music stars, and there is one in my new book, Lovers and Players, and there is also a hip-hop music mogul who I think you will like a lot.

  

  Jackie Collins
  • Music
  • Book
  • Stars

• A comprehensive marketing plan involves both online and offline efforts to use and broaden your existing platform to promote your book.

  

  M. J. Rose
  • Book
  • Marketing
  • Plan

• Oh I'm a huge comic book movie fan.

  

  Kat Dennings
  • Book
  • Movie
  • Comic

• I love teaching online at my website and soon I'll be writing a math book. I love to teach math. I just don't have time for a full-time teaching gig. Acting is way too time-consuming.

  

  Danica McKellar
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Love

• When I'm writing a book, sentence by sentence, I'm not thinking theoretically. I'm just trying to work out the story from inside the characters I've got.

  

  Salman Rushdie
  • Work
  • Thinking
  • Writing

• The American psychologist Julian Jaynes, in a controversial study on the origin of consciousness, argued that the bicameral mind - in which one of the hemispheres becomes specialized in silent reading - is a late development in humankind's evolution, and that the process by which this function develops is still changing.

  

  Alberto Manguel
  • Mind
  • American
  • Reading

• I'm a 'what if' person. I have always felt that failure was a completely underrated experience. I have taken blows. I have had high moments. But I don't think the blows have ever hardened me. My enthusiasms are still big.

  

  Kevin Costner
  • Experience
  • Person
  • Failure

• It goes without saying that only inner greatness possess a true value ("une valeur véritable,", Fr.) . Any attempt to rise up (or at rising up, - "s'élever", Fr.) outwardly above others, or to want or wish to impose one's superiority, denote a lack of moral greatness, since we do not try to replace ("suppléer", Fr.) in that way (.... in French "par là", Fr.) to what, if we did really possess it, would have no need whatsoever to flaunt itself.

  

  African Spir
  • Greatness
  • Rise
  • Possess

• I understand the boos. It was one of the toughest things I had to do leaving here. I am also very excited about where I am now.

  

  Eddy Curry
  • Understand
  • Excited
  • Boos

• Asking a critic to name his favorite book is like asking a butcher to name his favorite pig.

  

  John McCarthy
  • Book