Peter Osnos Quotations

What I have always believed in 40 years of experience in the book publishing industry is that you can do what you want as a writer as long as you tell the reader what you are doing. Art is about honesty. My objection is not the use of memoir as literature it certainly can be. My objection is to the lack of honesty.

I don't think you would dispute that if I asked you to describe what you were wearing it would be a different description from mine. So it strikes me as not a big deal that memoir is subjective. It's that it has to be honest in its retelling of facts or tell you that it's not.

The temptation to put standards aside in pursuit of sales volume is enormous.

In today's world, books have to compete with so much else for peoples' time, that unless they are present when and how the prospective readers wants them, attention will immediately turn elsewhere.