so much for the "like" world we live in. . .

Andrew Wylie: "Unless you’re a terribly bad writer, you are never going to have too many readers."

Robert Bausch: "Readers who put down books because they don't like the characters are not very good readers, so you don't want them anyway. I've heard editors at major publishers say they do not want a particular book because the character is not 'likable,' so the philistines are on the march and it's clear the woods are burning. But it's a rigorously stupid idea that we should 'like' the characters we read about. If that were actually true, we could instantly eliminate fully half of the world's great literature and forget about it, starting with Richard The III, and coming forward to Portnoy and 'Rabbit' Angstrom."