Pauline at Barnes & Noble reportedly said: THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS!

17 Sep, 2017

Can you use a good laugh? David Thorne is an Australian writer, humorist and satirist. I think he's a really funny guy. He's got a website that I discovered today. I clicked on a page that details a 2015 email exchange with a book-signing coordinator with Barnes & Noble by the name of Pauline. Apparently David set up a book-signing date at a B&N store without notifying B&N. It came to the attention of Pauline. And it rapidly went downhill from there. Really funny stuff. Here's the link. Have fun! That's not how it works.

Pauline at Barnes & Noble reportedly said: THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS!

September 17, 2017June 5, 2026

Can you use a good laugh? David Thorne is an Australian writer, humorist and satirist. I think he’s a really funny guy. Read More...

The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.

George Bernard Shaw

Anecdotes don’t make good stories. Generally, I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.

Alice Munro

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

Truman Capote Quote

In Hollywood, the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

Will Rogers

If the sex scene doesn’t make you want to do it — whatever it is they’re doing — it hasn’t been written right.

Sloan Wilson

I haven’t got 10 rules that guarantee success, though I promise I’d share them if I did. The truth is that I found success by stumbling off alone in a direction most people thought was a dead end, breaking all the 1990s shibboleths about children’s books in the process.

J.K. Rowling

No writer has ever yet been known to hang himself as long as he had another chapter left.

Thomas Wolfe

Reading and weeping opens the door to one’s heart, but writing and weeping opens the window to one’s soul.

M. K. Simmons

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

G.K. Chesterton

It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil, trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.

William Faulkner

Read a thousand books and your words will flow like a river.

Lisa See

A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.

Joseph Conrad

Editor: A person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.

Elbert Hubbard

The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book.

Mickey Spillane

It is only natural to pattern yourself after someone. But you can’t just copy someone. If you like someone’s work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to.

Bob Dylan

I have a structured songwriting process. I start with the music and try to come up with musical ideas, then the melody, then the hook, and the lyrics come last.

John Legend

I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin.

John Irving

Ever heard of a carpenter not going to work because he has “carpenter’s block”? If a writer can’t write, it’s because he doesn’t really want to, he isn’t ready to get it on paper or he’s just plain lazy.

Chet Cunningham

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

Don’t annoy an author, you’ll end up in their book and you won’t look good.