A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
One man is as good as another until he has written a book.
Writing a novel is one of those modern rites of passage, I think, that lead us from an innocent world of contentment, drunkenness, and good humor, to a state of chronic edginess and the perpetual scanning of bank statements.
The fun one can have writing books about books is limitless, to be honest.
As a rule, anyone who can tell a good story can write one, so there really need be no mistake about his qualification; such a man will be careful not to be wearisome, and to keep his point, or his catastrophe, well in hand.
Except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than a book.
Great, big, serious novels always get awards. If it's a battle between a great, big, serious novel and a funny novel, the funny novel is doomed.
Everybody has a Bill Murray story. He just punishes people for reasons they can't figure out.
In our fathers' time nothing was read but books of feigned chivalry, wherein a man by reading should be led to none other end, but only to manslaughter and bawdry.
If a man writes a book, let him set down only what he knows. I have guesses enough of my own.
The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was 'Crime and Punishment'. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days... I said, 'If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.'