Brad Meltzer, Novelist
" In my opinion, I think that success is always self-defined, and I think you're only happy with your success if you are a happy person to begin with. Someone once said to me that miserable people can live anywhere and they'll be miserable and happy people can live anywhere and they will be happy. I think similarly that applies to success as well. In my opinion, success has nothing to do with money or fame or any of that nonsense. I think success is the answer to the question -- are you allowed and able to do what you love to do? And if the answer is yes, then you are very successful and anything else just becomes something that gets caught up in, probably the trap that we in society put on ourselves. But to answer your question about whether I feel I'm successful, I'm just happy. I feel like I'm lucky and fortunate to be able to do what I do and that people pay me to talk to my imaginary friends and on that alone I can't ask for anything more than that."

On Passion:
"I'm not a self-hating lawyer, I won't say that, so I'm not like one of those people who says “oh, I just couldn't wait to get away from law school and I hated it and I was miserable”. Actually I loved law school. I think the law and the concept is interesting. I think it's fascinating. I just think you have to follow your passion and my passion is to write and when I started doing it I just didn't know that. When I started law school and applied for law school I didn't know that I loved to write at that point. So I didn't go to law school because I wanted book ideas. I went to law school because I just didn't know what else I was going to do with my time, and I also knew that I had to pay off some college. I had grown up in a very normal environment, and I just felt that if everything goes to pot and this writing doesn't work out, I should have something to fall back on. So on that level it was my own cowardly choice. I wasn't going to wait tables and play the starving artist, because I knew what it was like to have money issues, and I didn't want to have those money issues. So that was why I went to law school. What happened there once I got there I never expected."

On Preserverance:
"When I was writing in law school. . . I wrote my first book before I got to law school. It got me 24 rejection letters, and at that point there were only 20 publishers, and I had 24 people tell me to give it up. Telling me some people were sending me the same letter twice to make sure I got the point."

On the Paths of Life
"I just feel like I've had too many things that I've been fortunate enough to stumble into to, not believe that there is some grand plan. Of course you have to [recognize them when they cross your path]. You can't just walk past them, but at the same time they still have to cross your path and some people will call whatever…. I think I do believe God is definitely with me on that level. Has put all these different things in front of me to trip over, and maybe I'm just stupid enough that I keep falling, but I really just don't think it's just my, my wonderful brain and my fantastic imagination that's got me do the things I've been able to do."

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