Quote

I can't change overnight into a serious literary author. You can't compare apples to oranges. William Faulkner was a great literary genius. I am not.

John Grisham

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Grisham
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: February 8
Actor
Film Producer
Lawyer
Missionary
Novelist
Politician
Screenwriter
Television Producer
Writer
Jonesboro
Arkansas
John Ray Grisham
Jr.
John Ray Grisham Jr
Apples
Author
Compare
Faulkner
Genius
Oranges
Serious
Overnight
Change
William
Great
Orange
Literary

More quotes by John Grisham

Image
In life, finding a voice is speaking and living the truth. Each of you is an original. Each of you has a distinctive voice. When you find it, your story will be told. You will be heard.
John Grisham
Image
I give off rather mixed messages about the law. On the one hand, I can honestly say I don't miss working in a law office. On the other hand I do enjoy watching the law and while the profession may have its problems, I have sold zillions of books out of magnifying them.
John Grisham
Image
When you work at street level you never know who's going to walk through your door.
John Grisham
Image
You need some coffee, don't you? Yes, I've only had a gallon.
John Grisham
Image
Nobody wants to read about the honest lawyer down the street who does real estate loans and wills. If you want to sell books, you have to write about the interesting lawyers - the guys who steal all the money and take off. That's the fun stuff.
John Grisham
Image
In little pockets of conversation, old men were telling stories of ancient floods. Women were talking of about how much rain there'd been in other towns -- Paragould, Lepanto, and Manila.
John Grisham
Image
So many book sections in newspapers and magazines used to be lively and vibrant places. Now they are gone. You just don't see many reviews anymore. I can't control that, so I don't worry about it. I just try to do what I do and write books that people find every entertaining. I don't worry about the critics.
John Grisham
Image
I learned that lesson a long time ago. When you write popular fiction, you're going to get bashed by critics.
John Grisham
Image
And they drank heavily, partied with great enthusiasm, and relished the drug culture they moved in and out and slept around, and this was okay because they defined their own morality. They were fighting for the Mexicans and the redwoods, dammit! They had to be good people!
John Grisham
Image
I always do book signings with the same blue pen. That way, if I add a personalised message to a book I've already signed, it'll be in the same colour as my signature.
John Grisham
Image
Shame was an emotion he had abandoned years earlier. Addicts know no shame. You disgrace yourself so many times you become immune to it.
John Grisham
Image
Still, something about writing made me spend large hours of my free time at my desk.
John Grisham
Image
I seriously doubt I would ever have written the first story had I not been a lawyer. I never dreamed of being a writer. I wrote only after witnessing a trial.
John Grisham
Image
I've written 17 novels, and I've found out that fiction can't keep up with real life.
John Grisham
Image
After I'd been a lawyer for about five or six years, I started playing around with fiction.
John Grisham
Image
Very few writers understand the complex history and maddening social order of the Mississippi Delta. For Steve Yarbrough, though, it's home turf. He is wickedly observant, funny, cynical, evocative, and he possesses a gift that cannot be taught: he can tell a story.
John Grisham
Image
I don't want to force my politics on my readers.
John Grisham
Image
There are few writers who, if they publish anything, I am going to buy it: Ian McEwan, Scott Turow, Pat Conroy - he was a buddy of mine and I always read his stuff. Also: Harlan Coben, Elmore Leonard, John Le Carre, but he's pushing ninety.
John Grisham
Image
I guess under the right circumstances, a man will do just about anything.
John Grisham
Image
In my case, once you sell a lot of books and you are labeled a bestselling author, the serious critics are never gonna say anything nice about you.
John Grisham