“To be identified with the public is the divine gift of the best-sellers in popular Romance and, no doubt, in popular realism. E. M. Forster once spoke of the novelist as sending down a bucket into the unconscious; the author of She installed a suction pump. He drained the whole reservoir of the public's secret desires. Critics speak of the reader suspending unbelief; the best-seller knows better; man is a believing animal.”

“Paper is my best friend and paper seller is my worst friend!”

“Alexander Hamilton spoke the language of legitimacy when, as Publius, he noted in Federalist 27 the connection between sound Public Administration and widespread popular support”

“The best of our fiction is by novelists who allow that it is as good as they can give, and the worst by novelists who maintain that they could do much better if only the public would let them.”

“A new type of poem has been evolved and popularized by the demands of the anthology-reading public. It is called 'the perfect modern lyric.' Like the best-seller novel, it is usually achieved in the dark; but certain critical regulations can be made for it. It must be fairly regular in form and easily memorized, it must be a new combination of absolutely warn-out material, it must have a certain unhealthy vigour or languor, and it must start off engagingly with a simple sentimental statement. Somewhere a daring pseudo-poetical image must be included…”

“It's embarrassing when you try to overthrow the government and you wind up on the Best Seller's List.”

“Kids don’t know about best sellers. They go for what they enjoy. They aren’t star chasers and they don’t suck up. It’s why I like them.”

“Aldiss’s second law of thermo-linguistics states that what is most popular is rarely best and that what is best is rarely most popular.”

“Read everything. Read fiction and non-fiction, read hot best sellers and the classics you never got around to in college.”

“One recalls how much the creative impulse of the best-sellers depends upon self-pity. It is an emotion of great dramatic potential.”