Manuscripts Quotes - Page 5

• I need to see the original paintings just as little as I have to read the original manuscripts of books.

  Rene Magritte

  Book, Needs, Littles

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• I ran through the manuscript in the space of a day, much as one might pick compulsively at a box of chocolates. It was simply too provocative to put down. Has the potential of being highly influential inside the field and among an informed public.

  Baruch Halpern

  Space, Chocolate, Might

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• Himmler wants to send an expedition to Tibet to look for ancient manuscripts on the Aryans. The man is like a little schoolgirl. What culture is there in an old jug, I ask you?

  Adolf Hitler

  Men, Jugs, Culture

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• If we are perplexed by an apparent contradiction in Scripture, it is not allowable to say, 'The author of this book is mistaken'; but either the manuscript is faulty, or the translation is wrong, or you have not understood.

  Saint Augustine

  Book, Scripture, Contradiction

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• I love the process of cracking the spine for the first time and slowly sinking into a book. That will soon seem old-fashioned, I'm sure, like the time of illuminated manuscripts.

  Edwidge Danticat

  Book, Firsts, Process

  "A Voice in Haiti’s Chorus". Interview with Elizabeth Gettelman, www.motherjones.com. 2010.

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• For me - showing a half-finished manuscript is tricky. Just as a bird will get spooked and abandon her eggs if some outside party comes around and makes too much noise or pokes around the nest too intrusively - well, that's what it's like for me if I show work too early and I get a lot of editorial suggestions at the wrong time.

  Donna Tartt

  Party, Eggs, Bird

  Interview with Michael Pietsch, www.slate.com. October 11, 2013.

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• I'm gregarious with writers and never with manuscripts . . . I [like to] create the illusion of seamless perfection, so I alone know the flawed homely process along the way.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Perfection, Way, Illusion

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• When I get sent manuscripts from aspiring poets, I do one of two things: if there is no stamped self-addressed envelope, I throw it into the bin.-If there is, I write and tell them to f**k off.

  Philip Larkin

  Writing, Self, Two

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• Your first attempt will be terrible.... Remember that everything great you see started out as someone else's bad first draft..... Whenever someone sends me a manuscript and says, 'It just flowed out of me,' I usually think: Let it flow back into you for a while.

  Pamela Druckerman

  Thinking, Flow, Firsts

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• I wake at 5 or 5:30 most mornings, make myself a latte and grab a cookie, write until 10 or 11, go have my favorite meal, 'second breakfast,' or grab coffee with friends, or play basketball. Then, around noon, I begin apologizing via email for the manuscripts I can't get to.

  Jess Walter

  Basketball, Morning, Coffee

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• Why am I obsessed with the idea I can justify myself by getting manuscripts published? Is it an escape-an excuse for any social failure-so I can say "No, I don't go out for many extracurricular activities, but I spend a lot of time writing."

  Sylvia Plath

  Writing, Ideas, Excuse

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.33, Anchor

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• Trends come and go, and if you try to latch onto a trend it will likely be passé by the time you have completed your manuscript.

  Andrew McAleer

  Trying, Trends, Latches

  Andrew McAleer (2008). “101 Habits of Highly Successful Novelists: Insider Secrets from Top Writers”, p.66, Adams Media

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• Novels are completed when they are finished, but the memoir changes its own conclusion by virtue of being written... I was not at all the same person, when I handed the manuscript to the publisher, as I had been when I began. A memoir may always be retrospective, but the past is not where its action takes place.

  Nuala O'Faolain

  Past, May, Action

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• Often I sort of work up and down the manuscript. I sometimes used to go ahead of myself to see what was going to happen next, to make certain it fits what was going to be happening soon.

  Terry Pratchett

  Next, Sometimes, Fit

  "Terry Pratchett on his latest novel, his medical diagnosis, and more". Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2012.

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• Your book may be a masterpiece but do not suggest that to the publisher because many of the most hopeless manuscripts that have come his way have probably been so described by their authors.

  Stanley Unwin

  Book, May, Way

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• You had censorship. If you brought a manuscript to the publisher, you knew he would suggest changes. If you wanted to write and speak what you thought had to be written and spoken, you had to act against all these suppressive rules.

  Stefan Heym

  Writing, Censorship, Speak

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• I felt that there were so many things that could go wrong, in adapting The Hunger Games , and I had this fierce desire to protect this book that she had written. At that time, I read the second book, in manuscript form, and so I saw where she was going with the series. I was able to convince Suzanne [Collins] to trust me with the books.

  Nina Jacobson

  Book, Games, Desire

  Source: collider.com

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• If the big publishers are doing so well, why do they require writers to send return postage with their manuscripts?

  Dan Poynter

  Return, Bigs, Wells

  Dan Poynter (2003). “The self-publishing manual: how to write, print, and sell your own book”, Para Publishing

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• A manuscript not submitted is a book not published.

  Dan Poynter

  Book

  Dan Poynter (2003). “The self-publishing manual: how to write, print, and sell your own book”, Para Publishing

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• The usual way - through a long series of rejections, revising my manuscripts, and kept trying again and again. Finally I was fortunate enough to find a good agent.

  Danielle Steel

  Long, Rejection, Trying

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• I finish the book so I can see how it's going to end. I write that first sentence, and if it's the right first sentence, it leads to the right second sentence and three years later you have a 500-page manuscript, but it really is like going on a trip, going on a journey. It's a voyage.

  Tom Robbins

  Book, Writing, Journey

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• There's never any humongous next draft. I know a writer who every time he finished a novel - you would know his name very well - but his editor would come and live with him for a month. And they would go through the manuscript together.

  Dean Koontz

  Editors, Names, Together

  "The Rumpus Interview With Dean Koontz". Interview with Ben Pfeiffer, therumpus.net. December 21, 2015.

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• The manuscript you submit [should not] contain any flaws that you can identify - it is up to the writer to do the work, rather than counting on some stranger in Manhattan to do it for him.

  Richard North Patterson

  Manhattan, Flaws, Stranger

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• In fact, most of the changes found in early Christian manuscripts have nothing to do with theology or ideology. Far and away the most changes are the result of mistakes pure and simple slips of the pen, accidental omissions, inadvertent additions, misspelled words, blunders of one sort or another.

  Bart D. Ehrman

  Christian, Mistake, Simple

  Bart D. Ehrman (2008). “Whose Word is It?: The Story Behind who Changed the New Testament and why”, p.55, A&C Black

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• Since my first novel was rescued from a slush pile, it makes me sad that most publishing houses no longer accept unsolicited manuscripts. Nor are many willing to take chances on novels that are not deemed immediately "marketable."

  Katherine Paterson

  Publishing House, Firsts, Take A Chance

  Source: www.hbook.com

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