"A publisher is simply a useful middle-man...." - Quote by Oscar Wilde

“I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.”

“Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.”

“Life is a great disappointment.”

“I object to publishers: the one service they have done me is to teach me to do without them. They combine commercial rascality with artistic touchiness and pettishness, without being either good business men or fine judges of literature.”

“The moment when the finished book or, better yet, a tightly packed carton of finished books arrives on my doorstep is the moment of truth, of culmination; its bliss lasts as much as five minutes, until the first typographical error or production flaw is noticed.”

“Publishers are looking for blockbusters - all the world loves a megaseller.”

“(Waste = Loss): The first rule of business is to survive and the guiding principle of business economics is not the maximisation of profit, it is the avoidance of loss”

“We like to buy businesses, but we don't like to sell them.”

“Some time ago a publisher told me that there are four kinds of books that seldom, if ever, lose money in the United States--first,murder stories; secondly, novels in which the heroine is forcibly overcome by the hero; thirdly, volumes on spiritualism, occultism and other such claptrap, and fourthly, books on Lincoln.”