Arthur Smith Quotes

One of the more interesting things I've learnt since becoming a writer is that if you like the book, you'll generally like the person. It doesn't always work in reverse - there are huge numbers of lovely people out there writing not very good books.

Minor writers think style is all.

You can write the best book you can, and that might still not be enough. Appeal isn't something that most writers can't strive for or identify. It's something even the best agents and editors can't always identify.

Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions.

I don't think you can ever assess your work. I don't think Turgenev could assess his any more than I can assess mine, and his didn't have a social impact as much as great literary impact.

Robert Ludlum, all of them, write the absolute best they can. You can't tone it down. You just do what you do, and if it comes out literary, so be it.

No one writes a great book every time out, or even a good book.

No writer must be measured by a word or paragraph. He is to be measured by his work - by the tendency, not of one line, but by the tendency of all.

I had written a book. For various reasons, the publishing industry had decided that my book was going to be 'important.' The novel had taken me 12-and-a-half years to write, and after being with the book for so long, I had no real perspective on the merits or demerits of what I had written. I hoped it was good, but feared that it wasn't.

I believe if you write a great book, the chances are it'll get a great reception.

Great writing is great writing. It's as simple as all that.

Size has nothing to do with literature. All legs are long enough to touch the ground, and all books are big enough to fill their covers.

Any good writer is going to be well-received and is going to not be well-received; that's how you know you're a great writer.

The fact people think that when you sell a lot of books you are not a serious writer is a great insult to the readership. I get a little angry when people try to say such a thing.

A good novel is a good novel, pointe finale. And I think what I'm writing is exactly that.

I attempt to write a good novel. Whether it is literature or not is something that will be decided by the ages, not by me and not by a pack of critics around the globe.

There are good books and there are bad books, period, that's the distinction.

Good writing is good writing, and I'm so happy when I read it.

Today, writers want to impress other writers.

The whole purpose of books is that we read them, and if you find you can't, it might not be your inadequacy that's to blame. 'Good' books can be pretty awful sometimes.

People never read my books for the quality of the documentary value.

Even the best novelists are rarely congratulated on the quality of their observations about contemporary life.

If you're going to clutter up the world with more novels, you should do a little more than entertain people.

Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

It is a pity, in my opinion, that no prize exists for the writer who best refrains from adding to the world's bad books.