Manuscript Quotes

106 quotes by 97 authors

The manuscript looks chaotic, even by mathematics standards. — George Andrews
Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it - whole-heartedly - and delete it before sending your manuscript… — Arthur Quiller-Couch
Learn punctuation; it is your little drum set, one of the few tools oyu have to signal the reader where the beats and emphases go.… — Annie Dillard
You need a good editor because every writer thinks he can write a War and Peace, but by the time he gets it on paper,… — Samuel Johnson
The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat. — Robert A. Heinlein
If a publisher declines your manuscript, remember it is merely the decision of one fallible human being, and try another. — Stanley Unwin
Thus there are two books from whence I collect my Divinity; besides that written one of God, another of his servant Nature, that universal and… — Thomas Browne
I told that girl, in the kindest, gentlest way, that I could not consent to deliver judgment upon any one's manuscript, because an individual's verdict… — Mark Twain
If you invent two or three people and turn them loose in your manuscript, something is bound to happen to them -- you can't help… — Mark Twain
I pulled out the manuscript [from the envelope] and a great big stiff cardboard finger sprung up. This is someone that was so certain they… — Gardner Dozois
I write very raw, ugly, illiterate first drafts very quickly (novels are always in first draft in under a year) and then I spend years… — Porochista Khakpour
To visit Morocco is still like turning the pages of some illuminated Persian manuscript all embroidered with bright shapes and subtle lines. — Edith Wharton
Having a book is somewhat like having a baby, as many woman writers have observed before me: the conception, the long preparation, the wait, the… — Doris Grumbach
I am the luckiest novelist in the world. I was a first-time novelist who wasn't awash in rejection slips, whose manuscript didn't disappear in slush… — Vikas Swarup
I teach one semester a year, and this year I'm just teaching one course during that semester, a writing workshop for older students in their… — Tobias Wolff
Seventeen publishers rejected the manuscript, at which time we knew we had something pretty hot. — Kinky Friedman
Books are like your children. They take nine months to write; the manuscript weighs six pounds and...you send them out into the world and hope… — Edna Buchanan
What the young writer is looking for is not a critic who will slap him on the back and say, 'Greatest thing since O. Henry,'… — Henry Sydnor Harrison
Lincoln was not a good impromptu speaker; he was at his best when he could read from a carefully prepared manuscript, though maybe a teleprompter… — David Herbert Donald
I love all of my children equally, all of my printed books, and each one bears a special piece of me. But the one Im… — Steve Berry

Who Wrote These Manuscript Quotes

97 authors contributed a total of 106 Manuscript Quotes, led by these top contributors: