Pulp Magazines Quotes & Sayings

[SF] was a commercial genre born in the old adventure pulp magazines
of the first third of the twentieth century, aimed primarily at
adolescent males, which, over the decades, in fits and starts,
evolved into an intellectually credible, scientifically germane,
transcendental literature without losing its popular base.

Of what other literature in the history of the western world can
this truly be said? — Norman Spinrad

I decided to write Westerns because there was a terrific market for Westerns in the '50s. There were a lot of pulp magazines, like 'Dime Western' and '10 Story Western' that were still being published. The better ones paid two cents a word. And I thought, 'I like Westerns.' — Elmore Leonard

If people were paid for writing rot such as I read in some of those magazines that I could write stories just as rotten. — Edgar Rice Burroughs

While 'The Middle' is still funny for adults to watch, there aren't sex jokes. And I'm fine with that. I like the idea that my nieces and nephews can watch it without their parents. — Neil Flynn

[Huxley's Perennial Philosophy is concerned with] the need to love the earth and respect nature instead of following the example of those who 'chopped down vast forests to provide the newsprint demanded by that universal literacy which was to make the world safe for intelligence and democracy, and got wholesale erosion, pulp magazines, and organs of Fascist, Communist, capitalist, and nationalist propaganda.' He attacked 'technological imperialism' and the mechanisation which was 'increasing the power of a minority to exercise a co-ersive control over the lives of their fellows' and 'the popular philosophy of life ... now moulded by advertising copy whose one idea is to persuade everybody to be as extroverted and uninhibitedly greedy as possible, since of course it is only the possessive, the restless, the distracted, who spend money on the things that advertisers want to sell. — Nicholas Murray

Every novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality. — Jorge Luis Borges

Ironically the blog has re-opened the essay as a good form for me. I like to look and make commentary! If I sense my essays are good, I try to resubmit to another place in pulp and several of them have been variously published in newspapers and magazines. — Stephen Vincent Benet

Hugo Gernsback invented pulp magazines and the grandfather paradox. Not bad for a charlatan. — James Gleick

If the world does improve on the whole, yet youth must always begin anew, and go through the stages of culture from the beginning. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The many magazines, ranging from pulp to slick, that used to serve as both farm teams for writers and lures to readers, with hundreds of short stories every month, don't exist. Most of the doors for new people have been sealed. — Donald E. Westlake

Never be boring, not for one scene, paragraph, sentence, or word. — James V. Smith Jr.

Our magazine shelves are filled with crime and sex pulp-magazines that are being read and devoured by millions of young people ...
Scores are seeing each week the trash that Hollywood produces. Truly our children are movie mad. — Billy Graham

The walls of the Franciscan Church of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin Mary were ruined stucco chipping away from the brick underneath, with ghostly frescoes, concrete-filled niches, and one complete, vivid crucifix painted over the altar. — Elizabeth McCracken

What we have here is a rousing boy's adventure story, adapted from stories that Edgar Rice Burroughs cranked out for early pulp magazines. They lacked the visceral appeal of his Tarzan stories, which inspired an estimated 89 movies; amazingly, this is the first John Carter movie, but it is intended to foster a franchise and will probably succeed. — Roger Ebert

Compassion is not a virtue
it is a commitment. It's not something we have or don't have
it's something we choose to practice. — Brene Brown

Those which defend liberty, equality and fraternity, seem to us superior to those which accept tyranny, the subservience of women, social and ethnic hatred. — Claude Gueant

I'm always wearing Spanx, eating ice cream and feeling a bit lonely. — Sheridan Smith

An economist is a man that can tell you ... what can happen under any given condition, and his guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's too. — Will Rogers

I have also been touched by the dark side of power and leadership. — Jacqueline Novogratz

People that want to control words will never ever try to break up, like, a fight on a subway. They will never confront an aggressive person on the bus. They prefer their fights to be easy. — Greg Gutfeld

Kandinski looked up. 'Do you read science fiction?' he asked matter-of-factly.
'Not as a rule,' Ward admitted. When Kandinski said nothing he went on: 'Perhaps I'm too skeptical, but I can't take it too seriously.'
Kandinski pulled at a blister on his palm. 'No one suggests you should. What you mean is that you take it too seriously.'
Accepting the rebuke with a smile at himself, Ward pulled out one of the magazines and sat down at a table next to Kandinski. On the cover was a placid suburban setting of snugly eaved houses, yew trees, and children's bicycles. Spreading slowly across the roof-tops was an enormous pulpy nightmare, blocking out the sun behind it and throwing a weird phosphorescent glow over the roofs and lawns. 'You're probably right,' Ward said, showing the cover to Kandinski. 'I'd hate to want to take that seriously.'
("The Venus Hunters") — J.G. Ballard

Feel guilty. Mourn this. But move on. Don't let it destroy you. Forgive yourself. — Richelle Mead

Badly drawn, badly written and badly printed - a strain on young eyes and young nervous systems - the effect of these pulp-paper nightmares is that of a violent stimulant. Their crude blacks and reds spoil the child's natural sense of color; their hypodermic injection of sex and murder makes the child impatient with better, though quieter, stories. Unless we want a coming generation even more ferocious than the present one, parents and teachers throughout America must band together to break the 'comic' magazines.

But the antidote to the 'comic' magazine poison can be found in any library or good bookstore. The parent who does not acquire that antidote for his child is guilty of criminal negligence. — Sterling North

Hawkwind are one of those bands that people introduce you to because you don't see them on the covers of magazines. I'd heard 'Silver Machine' but Russell Senior, who was in Pulp, got me into them. They had a song called 'Master Of The Universe' and we nicked the title in 1985 for one of our songs. — Jarvis Cocker

If you're not confident in the authority of the Scriptures, you will be a slave to what sounds right. — Matt Chandler

In theory, say you did have thousands of people - no, thousands of systems - enraged at a hypothetical Galactic Empire in a faraway galaxy. But they're all upset over local matters, over particular grievances, and they never get together on anything. So they get no strength in numbers, no strategic advantages from cooperation. They're easy to divide and conquer. And worst of all, no common spirit ever develops. — John Jackson Miller