Chris Pavone

“Travel wasn't fun if you didn't get to see or do what you wanted; it was merely a different type of work, in a different place.”

“Although I did admire David Foster Wallace's final unfinished novel about boredom, I'm no DFW, and I want my books to be exciting, not boring.”

“Every book that doesn't first have to get past a gatekeeper or two, or 10, before being put in front of the public will be worse.”

“After years of working on books, I eventually took a more business-oriented job, for the same sorts of reasons that most people take most new jobs: fancier title, higher pay, opportunities for advancement.”

“There's so much published by so many different publishers. Most of the time, I don't have to confront that, but walking into a conference center filled with books - and people buying them or not buying them, being interested or not interested in them - that's just overwhelming to me now.”

“Although no one loves a typo, it's close to impossible to eradicate every single little mistake in a manuscript.”

“Nearly all of us work, a lot: many people spend more waking hours working than doing all other things combined. And nearly all of us spend our lifetimes working for someone other than ourselves.”

“Having 'The Expats' not be 'wholesale-y' rejected by the world made it possible for me to write the second book and have a publisher buy it before it was entirely written. And it made it easier for me and my publisher to get 'The Accident' out into the world without trying to convince people to pay attention to it the way you do for a first novel.”