“I'm not saying all publishers have to be literary, but some interest in books would help.”

“Glad to know about all of you who care about books, including or especially poetry. I'm a much published writer/editor of 12 books (medical nonfiction, literary novels, mysteries) and much short work, inc. prize-winning pieces.”

“I have to declare in all candor that no one interested in being published in our time can afford to be so naive as to believe that a book will make it merely because it's good.”

“In the final analysis, it is not critics who create literary canons, it is other writers who create them .... A writer can have published thirty-seven volumes, but if that writer doesn't interest other writers, they will all molder in the library and nobody will ever want to read them again.”

“There are a lot of us, some published, some not, who think the literary life is the loveliest one possible, this life of reading and writing and corresponding. We think this life is nearly ideal.”

“It seemed to me then that to have published a book - any kind of book - would be the greatest possible happiness I could ask from life.”