Ah, the things that authors actually say.

On Beauty, Cover Letters and Zadie Smith:

"Just occasionally, everything comes together with giddy ease. Take Zadie Smith, the pre-eminent literary novelist of her generation and ludicrously good looking. From the start, she understood modern publishing’s unsavoury realpolitik and in the covering letter that helped secure her representation by the prestigious Wylie Agency wrote: 'I’m six foot tall, I’m 19 years old and I don’t exactly look like the back end of a bus.'" -- from The National Newspaper

Best cover letter ever.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez compares paperbacks to pastries:

"My job is to write, not to publish," said Garcia Marquez, 82, a native of Aracataca on Colombia's Caribbean coast. "I'll know when the pastries that I have in the oven are ready for the eating."
-- from a Reuters article

I have new respect for Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I never knew he even thought about pastries. Now we have something in common! Maybe I gave up on A Hundred Years of Solitude too soon?