Publishing Novels Quotes & Sayings

You know, in the old days, you might be able to slowly sort of build an audience for your work by publishing two, three novels before you hit it big. You know, now, there's much more of an emphasis in the publishing houses on making sure that every book makes money. — Chad Harbach

This was not a political party. It was an army. The purpose of the display, Lloyd figured, was to give them false authority. They wanted to look as if they had the right to close meetings and empty buildings, to burst into homes and offices and arrest people, to drag them to jails and camps and beat them up, interrogate and torture them, as the Brownshirts did in Germany under the Nazi regime so admired by Mosley and the Daily Mail's proprietor, — Ken Follett

Community is the place where are revealed all the darkness and anger, jealousies and rivalry hidden in our hearts. Community is a place of pain, because it is a place of loss, a place of conflict, and a place of death. But it is also a place of resurrection. — Jean Vanier

I bristle at the implication that only with the help of a Big Six editor does a novel lose its self-indulgent aspects. Before the advent of self-publishing, there were plenty of self-indulgent novels on the shelves. — Jennifer Armintrout

#23 on the field, #1 in your heart- Jack Carter — J. Sterling

It was only after two years' work that it occurred to me that I was a writer. I had no particular expectation that the novel would ever be published, because it was sort of a mess. It was only when I found myself writing things I didn't realise I knew that I said, 'I'm a writer now.' The novel had become an incentive to deeper thinking. That's really what writing is - an intense form of thought. — Don DeLillo

Her problem came in the shape of a man with blue eyes, blond stubble on his jaw, and a body made for indecent positions. — Robin Bielman

I won't deny that I haven't been this vulnerable for a long time, it scares me ~ all of it, love, emotion and connection but I've reached a point in my life that I now know this type of love doesn't knock often and when it does, maybe it's time to open the door. — Nikki Rowe

I continued writing the bad plays which fortunately nobody would produce, just as no one did me the unkindness of publishing my early novels. — Patrick White

The committees scour the bookstores, printing and publishing houses, paying particular attention to secondhand bookstores. There, they requisition countless copies of 'Incautious Maidens' or 'Flames at the Metropole.' So that those who prefer the false view of the world presented in cheap novels will never find refuge again. — Mariusz Szczygiel

Sometimes, I'm brave.
Sometimes, I'm just stubbron. — Nigia Stephens

The wisdom in publishing is that short-story collections don't sell. All too often short-story collections are viewed as vanity projects or are published by small presses, are not seen as real in the way that novels are real. Still, for me, the short stories are the places where I get to fly, to experiment, to play. I — Neil Gaiman

"It almost felt like the dolphin of my heart's desire playing in the ocean of my life." - on writing — Mariam Kobras

Inside, I break. Outside, I smile. — Jay McLean

My "I" has gone farther and farther away from me. Today it is my farthest "you". — Antonio Porchia

The real scientist is ready to bear privation and, if need be, starvation rather than let anyone dictate to him which direction his work must take. — Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

The hardest thing about writing a novel is getting it published. — Marianne Cushing

Then I decided I couldn't just crawl in the corner and die, so I started putting pen to paper and wrote some songs. I had no idea what for or who I was going to work with. I tried to find my way and direction. — Glenn Tipton

He was me and I was him and we were whole together. Now . . . now I'm in pieces, but Persephone is whole and for her, I'll endure. Miane — Nalini Singh

After graduate school, I stumbled into teaching mostly by chance. I was lucky and picked up new fields as I taught, expanding from creative writing to composition to graphic novels to editing and publishing to, inevitably, game studies. I devoured the work of Ian Bogost, Janet Murray, and Nathan Altice and slowly began weaving those texts into my courses, beginning with the more mainstream Tom Bissell and working up to MIT's platform studies or dense compendiums like The Video Game Theory Reader and articles collected on Critical Distance, my favorite aggregator of online game theory. After — Salvatore Pane

The pain of an unpublished manuscript is akin to the trauma of bearing an unborn. — Anurag Shourie

Thus far, I've devoted my entire career to publishing genre short fiction, but I now look forward to applying that same level of curation to finding the best new novels and new authors. — John Joseph Adams

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

I have been incredibly lucky with my novels but I had absolutely no idea if anyone would be interested in a cookbook. So I started to think about self-publishing. — Jane Green

Publishing a short story can sometimes feel like shouting into the dark ... your words come out, and then nothing ... but I don't think that's why I tend to write novels rather than stories. — Alice McDermott

Even though I got a late start, first publishing an essay when I was 50 years old, I've since written eight suspense novels. — Hallie Ephron

If I was talking to someone face-to-face I would always be clear, but with something like Snapchat, you need to keep the flirty banter going;otherwise you'll be staring at an empty red arrow, cringing. — Holly Carpenter

There is no safer anchorage for our learning, our lives, and our public actions than that provided by Divine teachings ... — Haile Selassie

Dennis the Peasant: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Arthur: Be quiet!
Dennis: You can't expect to wield supreme power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you! — Graham Chapman

Yet I am incapable of writing the only kind of novel which interests me: a book powered with an intellectual or moral passion strong enough to create order, to create a new way of looking at life. It is because I am too diffused. I have decided never to write another novel. I have fifty 'subjects' I could write about; and they would be competent enough. If there is one thing we can be sure of, it is that competent and informative novels will continue to pour from the publishing houses. I have only one, and the least important, of the qualities necessary to write at all, and that is curiosity. It is the curiosity of the journalist. — Doris Lessing

Soon after publishing a book for kids, my mailbox began to fill with letters from children all across America. Not because my novels for young readers are bestsellers - they're not by a long shot - but because today's kids love to write to authors. — Rodman Philbrick

We're all guilty of saying insincere things at one point or another, if only just to make the moment not totally suck as much as it truly does. — Jen Naumann

A good book is not the same as a successful one. — Johnny Rich

You were right the first time, Cathy. It was a stupid, silly story.
Ridiculous! Only insane people would die for the sake of love. I'll
bet you a hundred to one a woman wrote that junky romantic trash!"
Just a minute ago I'd despised that author for bringing about such a
miserable ending, then there I went, rushing to the defense. "T. M.
Ellis could very well have been a man! Though I doubt any woman writer
in the nineteenth century had much chance of being published, unless
she used her initials, or a man's name. And why is it all men think
everything a woman writes is trivial or trashy-or just plain silly
drivel? Don't men have romantic notions? Don't men dream of finding
the perfect love? And it seems to me, that Raymond was far more
mushy-minded than Lily! — V.C. Andrews

Eragon started as me but ended up evolving into his very own character, .. Even as he has gone through his coming- of- age story, the process of writing and publishing these novels has been my own coming- of- age story. There are parallels between my own experience and Eragon's, but fortunately, I don't have people charging at me with swords. — Christopher Paolini

My self-publishing adventure led to my work being picked up by a traditional publisher and eventually hitting the bestseller lists. That led to two more bestselling novels. — Ashwin Sanghi

One of the reasons I wanted to write this column, I think, is because I assumed that the cultural highlight of my month would arrive in book form, and that's true, for probably eleven months of the year. Books are, let's face it, better than everything else ... . Even if you love movies and music as much as you do books, it's still, in any given four week period, way, way more likely you'll find a great book that you haven't read than a great movie you haven't seen, or a great album you haven't heard: the assiduous consumer will eventually exhaust movies and music ... the feeling everyone has with literature: that we can't get through the good novels published in the last six months, let alone those published since publishing began. — Nick Hornby

10% of authors earn 75% of the royalties. If you're writing a Romance novel, your odds will be slightly higher at making back your investment. Throw in a few vampires, even better. — J.R. Young