Manuscripts Quotes - Page 9

• Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.

  John W. Campbell

  Home, Editors, Writing And Reading

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• The syndicates take the strip and sell it to newspapers and split the income with the cartoonists. Syndicates are essentially agents. Now, can you imagine a novelist giving his literary agent the ownership of his characters and all reprint, television, and movie rights before the agent takes the manuscript to a publisher? Obviously, an author would have to be a raving lunatic to agree to such a deal, but virtually every cartoonist does exactly that when a syndicate demands ownership before agreeing to sell the strip to newspapers.

  Bill Watterson

  Movie, Character, Rights

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• I love my editor, but that would be the definition of hell to me to live with someone and have them go page by page through my manuscript. That I want to avoid at all costs.

  Dean Koontz

  Editors, Pages, Would Be

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

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• But, as all scientists know, there is a time lag of 12 to 18 months between the time a manuscript is submitted and the time it is published in a scientific journal.

  Paul Harvey

  Dark, Age, Lag

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• To me, one of the greatest triumphs in doing a book is to tell the story as simply as possible. My aim is to imply rather than to overstate. Whenever the reader participates with his own interpretation, I feel that the book is much more successful. I write with the premise that less is more. Writing is not difficult to me. I read into a tape recorder, constantly dropping a word here and there from my manuscript until I get a minimum amount of words to say exactly what I want to say. Each time I drop a word or two, it brings me a sense of victory!

  Ezra Jack Keats

  Book, Writing, Successful

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• Though I leave the house as little as possible, I have the impression that someone is disturbing my papers. More than once I have discovered that some pages were missing from my manuscripts. A few days afterward I would find the pages in their place again. But often I no longer recognize my manuscripts, as if I had forgotten what I had written, or as if overnight I were so changed that no longer recognized myself in the self of yesterday.

  Italo Calvino

  Yesterday, Self, House

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• Fundamentally a good author has his or her own sense of style. There is a natural, deep voice, and that voice is present from the first draft of a manuscript. When he or she elaborates on the initial manuscript, it continues to strengthen and simplify that natural, deep voice.

  Kenzaburo Oe

  Voice, Style, Firsts

  "Kenzaburo Oe, The Art of Fiction No. 195". Interviewed with Sarah Fay, www.theparisreview.org. Winter 2007.

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• Historically, the Old Charges fall into three groups. The first comprises the two earliest versions, the Regius MS of c.1390 and the Cook MS of c.1420...The second, and largest, group begins with the Grand Lodge No. 1 MS, dated 25 December 1583, and covers all the versions datable before the formation of the premier Grand Lodge in 1717. The third group comprises manuscript and printed versions produced after 1717, the majority of which appear to have been produced as antiquarian curiosities.

  John Hamill

  Fall, Two, Curiosity

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• Each story, good and bad, short or long-from that trip to the mall when you saw Santa, to a long, bad illness-they are all a line or a paragraph in our own life manuscript. Two thirds of the way through, even, and it all won't necessarily make sense, but at the end there'll be a beautiful whole, where every sentence of every chapter fits.

  Deb Caletti

  Beautiful, Two, Long

  Deb Caletti (2013). “The Story of Us”, p.12, Simon and Schuster

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• Children ask better questions than adults. "May I have a cookie?" "Why is the sky blue?" and "What does a cow say?" are far more likely to elicit a cheerful response than "Where's your manuscript?" "Why haven't you called?" and "Who's your lawyer?"

  Fran Lebowitz

  Children, Blue, Sky

  Fran Lebowitz (2011). “The Fran Lebowitz Reader”, p.52, Vintage

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• Take the time you need to learn the craft. Then sit down and write. When you hand over your completed manuscript to a trusted reader, keep an open mind. Edit, edit, and edit again. After you have written a great query letter, go to AgentQuery.com. This site is an invaluable resource that lists agents in your genre. Submit, accept rejection as part of the process, and submit again. And, of course, never give up.

  Kathleen Grissom

  Giving Up, Writing, Hands

  Kathleen Grissom (2014). “The Kitchen House: A Novel”, p.376, Simon and Schuster

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• The unpublished manuscript is like an uncon-fessed sin that festers in the soul, corrupting and contaminating it.

  Antonio Machado

  Writing, Soul, Sin

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• Anyone who has invented a better mousetrap, or the contemporary equivalent, can expect to be harassed by strangers demanding that you read their unpublished manuscripts or undergo the humiliation of public speaking, usually on remote Midwestern campuses.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Innovation, Stranger, Public Speaking

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

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• Write a lot. And finish what you write. Don't join writer's clubs and go sit around having coffee reading pieces of your manuscript to people. Write it. Finish it. I set those rules up years ago, and nothing's changed.

  Jerry Pournelle

  Coffee, Reading, Writing

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• Alas, that Spring should vanish with the Rose! That Youths sweet-scented Manuscript should close!

  Omar Khayyam

  Sweet, Spring, Rose

  Omar Khayyam, Edward FitzGerald, Christopher Decker (1997). “Edward FitzGerald, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: A Critical Edition”, p.222, University of Virginia Press

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• When I was growing up the publishing world seemed so far away. When my mother wrote a book, she would look up the address of publishers on the backs of the books she owned and send off her manuscript.

  Kiran Desai

  Mother, Growing Up, Book

  "Kiran Desai on the Costs Of Literary Celebrity" by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, www.wsj.com. April 21, 2007.

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• Sometimes I have given my husband a manuscript to read that has turned out to have fantastic rave reviews and he'll tell me it is no good. Well, if I didn't know him as well as I know him I would be terribly depressed.

  Katherine Dunham

  Husband, Would Be, Sometimes

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• Extemporaneous and oral harangues will always have this advantage over those that are read from a in manuscript: every burst of eloquence or spark of genius they may contain, however studied they may have been beforehand, will appear to the audience to be the effect of the sudden inspiration of talent.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Inspiration, Genius, May

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.456

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• But, indeed, we prefer books to pounds; and we love manuscripts better than florins; and we prefer small pamphlets to war horses.

  Isaac D'Israeli

  Horse, War, Book

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 461, Curiosities of Literature, Pamphlets, 1922.

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• Transforms old print To zigzag manuscript, and cheats the eyes Of gallery critics by a thousand arts.

  William Cowper

  Art, Eye, Cheat

  William Cowper, John Bruce (F.S.A.) (1866). “Poetical Works”, p.49

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• The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case, He turns his quid of tobacco, while his eyes blur with the manuscript.

  Walt Whitman

  Eye, Printing, Cases

  Walt Whitman, Sculley Bradley, Harold W. Blodgett (2008). “Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 1855-1856”, p.16, NYU Press

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• The real reason Milton went blind was to avoid reading unsolicited manuscripts.

  Rita Mae Brown

  Real, Reading, Sight

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• I came to a dead stop and began major revisions. Sometimes these entailed the shredding of all existing manuscript for a fresh start - an inefficient way to write a book, though I found it exciting.

  William Manchester

  Book, Writing, Editing

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• No one would have the courage to walk up to a writer and ask to look at the last few pages of his manuscript, but they feel perfectly comfortable staring over an artist's shoulder while he is trying to paint.

  Robert Genn

  Artist, Trying, Looks

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• There is an energy, a romance in writing the first novel that can never be duplicated again. I was entirely absorbed in that world as I wrote the book [The Kite Runner] and to see the final page of that manuscript whir out of the printer was a very special feeling indeed.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Book, Writing, Romance

  "GeekDad Interview: Khaled Hosseini, Author of The Kite Runner". Interview with Tony Sims, www.wired.com. September 30, 2011.

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