Manuscripts Quotes

• Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts - the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Book, Writing

  St. Mark's Rest preface (1877)

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• We sometimes received - and I would read - 200 manuscripts a week. Some of them were wonderful, some were terrible; most were mediocre. It was like the gifts of the good and bad fairies.

  Marilyn Hacker

  Literature, Sometimes, Fairy

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• I keep working under the delusion that someday a library will ask for my manuscripts.

  Walter Wager

  Library, Someday, Delusion

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• Agents are essential, because publishers will not read unsolicited manuscripts.

  Jackie Collins

  Aquariums, Essentials, Agents

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• Now I have to have the biggest P.O. box in the entire post office to get all the manuscripts coming in.

  Susie Bright

  Office, Boxes, Posts

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• I never saw any of my dad's stories. My mother said he had piles and piles of manuscripts.

  Stephen King

  Mother, Dad, Stories

  "The Stephen King interview, uncut and unpublished". Interview with Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. September 14, 2000.

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• I submitted manuscripts to publishers. This was not so much a feeling that I should be published as a wish to escape the feared and hated drudgery of normal work.

  Tanith Lee

  Writing, Feelings, Wish

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• He loved a book because it was a book; he loved its odor, its form, its title. What he loved in a manuscript was its old illegible date, the bizarre and strange Gothic characters, the heavy gilding which loaded its drawings. It was its pages covered with dust — dust of which he breathed the sweet and tender perfume with delight.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Sweet, Book, Character

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• Manuscripts don't burn.

  Mikhail Bulgakov

  Mikhail Bulgakov (2016). “THE MASTER AND MARGARITA: 50th-Anniversary Edition (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.210, Penguin

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• I don't listen to music when I write - I find it distracting.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Writing, Listening To Music

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• I was the type who looked at discussions of What Is Truth only with a view toward correcting the manuscript. If you were to quote "I am that I am," for example, I thought that the fundamental problem was where to put the comma, inside the quotation marks or outside.

  Umberto Eco

  Views, Example, Quotation Marks

  Umberto Eco (2007). “Foucault's Pendulum”, p.62, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a rising scale of compliment: 1, to tell him you have read one of his books; 2, to tell him you have read all of his books; 3, to ask him to let you read the manuscript of his forthcoming book. No. 1 admits you to his respect; No. 2 admits you to his admiration; No. 3 carries you clear into his heart.

  Mark Twain

  Book, Heart, Three

  Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.2039, GENERAL PRESS

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• You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.

  Isaac Asimov

  Work, Writing, Persistence

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• Publishing is no longer simply a matter of picking worthy manuscripts and putting them on offer. It is now as important to market books properly, to work with the bookstore chains to getterms, co-op advertising, and the like. The difficulty is that publishers who can market are most often not the publishers with worthy lists.

  Olivia Goldsmith

  Book, Important, Matter

  Olivia Goldsmith (2014). “The Bestseller”, p.370, Diversion Books

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• The manuscript in the drawer either rots or ripens.

  Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

  Drawers

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• Do you know what you are? You are a manuscript oƒ a divine letter. You are a mirror reflecting a noble face. This universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you are already that.

  Rumi

  Mirrors, Faces, Looks

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• In my office in Florida I have, I think, 30 manuscript piles around the room. Some are screenplays or comic books or graphic novels. Some are almost done. Some I'm rewriting. If I'm working with a co-writer, they'll usually write the first draft. And then I write subsequent drafts.

  James Patterson

  Book, Writing, Thinking

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• A good deal of editing a manuscript looks like mechanical work, as if anyone with time on their hands and a magnifying glass could do it. But at a certain point, you need a strong interpretive conviction and, as you say, an "intangible" relationship to what you are doing.

  Oliver Harris

  Strong, Glasses, Editing

  Source: bigother.com

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• Our life is a book to which we add daily, until suddenly we are finished, and then the manuscript is burned.

  James M. Barrie

  Book, Add, Life Is

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• How is it that, a full two centuries after Jane Austen finished her manuscript, we come to the world of Pride and Prejudice and find ourselves transcending customs, strictures, time, mores, to arrive at a place that educates, amuses, and enthralls us? It is a miracle. We read in bed because reading is halfway between life and dreaming, our own consciousness in someone else's mind.

  Anna Quindlen

  Dream, Reading, Pride

  Anna Quindlen (2010). “How Reading Changed My Life”, p.20, Ballantine Books

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• During the Qin Dynasty, all books not relating to practical concerns such as agriculture or construction were ordered burned by the emperor to guard against "dangerous thought." Whether accounts of zombie attacks perished in the flames will never be known. This obscure section of a medical manuscript, preserved in the wall of an executed Chinese scholar, might be proof of such attacks.

  Max Brooks

  Wall, Book, Flames

  Max Brooks (2003). “The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead”, p.186, Broadway Books

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• What I had to face, the very bitter lesson that everyone who wants to write has got to learn, was that a thing may in itself be the finest piece of writing one has ever done, and yet have absolutely no place in the manuscript one hopes to publish.

  Thomas Wolfe

  Writing, Done, Pieces

  Thomas Wolfe (1952). “Selections from the works of Thomas Wolfe”

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• Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

  Samuel Johnson

  Science, Belief, Favourite

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• The question of manuscript changes is very important for literary criticism, the psychology of creation and other aspects of the study of literature.

  Umberto Eco

  Psychology, Criticism, Important

  "Literary game of drafts" by Umberto Eco, www.theguardian.com. March 29, 2002.

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• Edward and I had not had a last grand scene of farewell, nor did I plan one. To speak the word was to make it final. It would be the same as typing the words The End on the last page of a manuscript. So we did not say our goodbyes, and we stayed very close to each other, always touching. Whatever end found us, it would not find us separated.

  Stephenie Meyer

  Goodbye, Farewell, Touching

  Stephenie Meyer (2009). “Breaking Dawn: Twilight”, p.391, Hachette UK

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