Tea at Trianon: Interview with James Patterson

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Interview with James Patterson

A prolific and popular author discusses his success. From the Harvard Business Review:

I didn’t go to Harvard Business School. I’ve taken no business courses. I’ve taken no marketing courses. But I’m a creative problem solver. Often those two things, the creative and the analytical, don’t exist in the same body, so there aren’t enough of those people in business. But I think they need to be very high up in companies. That’s probably the main reason for my success. I am very creative: I have 500 pages of ideas for books. I couldn’t possibly do them all myself. And I have coauthors, none of whom had been very successful at solving the problem of writing a novel that was going to (a) get published, and (b) be successful, whether it’s terrific reviews or the best-seller list. (Read more.)