Literary Credibility Quotes

I remember, often, when you tell people you're doing a book about board games, they think you're totally nuts. And that might be warranted. But I feel like if we can't get the story of Monopoly right... what hope is there for anything else?

I think it's hard to be taken seriously as a poet, period.

There's never a false note in a Berg novel.

The short of it is, as an aspiring writer, there is nothing as damaging to your credibility as saying that you don't like to read.

If a novelist tells you something she knows or thinks, and you believe her, that is not because either of you think she is God, but because she is doing her work - as a novelist.

The distribution might which Penguin brought to the table and the stature they gave me as an author is unparalleled.

It's a lot harder for an author that's unpublished to say, 'Hey, here's a new book.' There's nothing of theirs to read, so you don't know what it's going to be like. Kickstarter is great, but you also have to put your work out there whenever you can so you can build a reputation.

If you appear in the 'Atlantic' or 'Harper's' or the 'New Yorker,' by God, you must be a writer, because everybody says so.

I think that's the most important job of a novelist - to bring authority to their writing.

You can't be a serious writer of fiction unless you believe the story you are telling.

I think it's significantly easier to be a female writer today than in the early 1800's. That said, it's hard to imagine almost anyone who knows anything about publishing disagreeing with the statement that women writers today are often taken much less seriously than men writers. But it's hard to quantify, and even define, what being taken seriously means.

There are writers who will do whatever they are told regardless of the circumstances - these are called 'hacks.' Your job isn't to make life difficult for your editor. But once a piece of crap goes out with your name on it, it is gone forever and will haunt you.