Interview with Publishers Weekly (19 April 1993)
“Certainly no one could have predicted what has happened. Back then, after 121 others had turned this book down, one lone editor offered a standard $3,000 advance. He said the book forced him to decide what he was in publishing for, and added that although this was almost certainly the last payment, I shouldn't be discouraged. Money wasn't the point with a book like this.”
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Afterword (1984)
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Robert M. Pirsig 164
American writer and philosopher 1928–2017Related quotes
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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Afterword (1984)
Context: A culture-bearing book, like a mule, bears the culture on its back. No one should sit down to write one deliberately. Culture-bearing books occur almost accidentally, like a sudden change in the stock market. There are books of high quality that are an part of the culture, but that is not the same. They are a part of it. They aren't carrying it anywhere. They may talk about insanity sympathetically, for example, because that's the standard cultural attitude. But they don't carry any suggestion that insanity might be something other than sickness or degeneracy.
“He was a one-book man. Some men have only one book in them; others, a library.”
Vol. I, ch. 11
Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)