Maxwell Perkins Quotes

• Writing a novel is a very hard thing to do because it covers so long a space of time, and if you get discouraged it is not a bad sign, but a good one. If you think you are not doing it well, you are thinking the way real novelists do. I never knew one who did not feel greatly discouraged at times, and some get desperate, and I have always found that to be a good symptom.

  Maxwell Perkins

  Real, Writing, Thinking

  28 Copy quote

• For real self esteem is not derived from the great things you've done, the things you won. The mark you've made - but an appreciation of yourself for what you are.

  Maxwell Perkins

  Appreciation, Real, Self Esteem

  11 Copy quote

• Editors are extremely fallible people, all of them. Don't put too much trust in them.

  Maxwell Perkins

  Editors, People, Too Much

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• If you are not discouraged about your writing on a regular basis, you may not be trying hard enough. Any challenging pursuit will encounter frequent patches of frustration. Writing is nothing if not challenging.

  Maxwell Perkins

  Writing, Frustration, Challenges

  34 Copy quote

• You can’t know a book until you come to the end of it, and then all the rest must be modified to fit that.

  Maxwell Perkins

  Book, Fit, Ends

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• Learn about writing from reading. That is the right way to do it.

  Maxwell Perkins

  Reading, Writing, Way

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• Every good thing that comes is accompanied by trouble.

  Maxwell Perkins

  Trouble, Good Things, Very Good

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• I believe the writer... should always be the final judge. I have always held to that position and have sometimes seen books hurt thereby, but at least as often helped. The book belongs to the author.

  Maxwell Perkins

  Hurt, Believe, Book

  Maxwell Evarts Perkins (2004). “The Sons of Maxwell Perkins: Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and Their Editor”, p.251, Univ of South Carolina Press

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• It is those people who know that they are right because some outside or higher power conveys the conviction to them who do the great damage in the world.

  Maxwell Perkins

  People, World, Damage

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• Writing, like drawing is an art, and whatever conveys the meaning is justified.

  Maxwell Perkins

  Art, Writing, Drawing

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• Anybody can find out if he is a writer. If he were a writer, when he tried to write of some particular day, he would find in the effort that he could recall exactly how the light fell and how the temperature felt, and all the quality of it. Most people cannot do it. If they can do it, they may never be successful in a pecuniary sense, but that ability is at the bottom of writing, I am sure.

  Maxwell Perkins

  Writing, Successful, Light

  29 Copy quote

• You have to throw yourself away when you write.

  Maxwell Perkins

  Writing

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• What we publishers think is that our function is to bring everything out into the open, on the theory that we have an adult population that knows values, or can learn them, and let them decide.

  Maxwell Perkins

  Thinking, Adults, Population

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• The book belongs to the author.

  Maxwell Perkins

  Book

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• I do not think anyone can read War and Peace too much. I read it six times.

  Maxwell Perkins

  War, Book, Reading

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• Of the whole public not a handful can understand the artist's point of view or the writer's conscience.

  Maxwell Perkins

  Artist, Views, People

  Thomas Wolfe, Maxwell Evarts Perkins, Matthew Joseph Bruccoli, Park Bucker (2000). “To Loot My Life Clean: The Thomas Wolfe--Maxwell Perkins Correspondence”, p.128, Univ of South Carolina Press

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• You are all right on time, except for the fact that time is the enemy of us all, and especially of the writer.

  Maxwell Perkins

  Time, Enemy, Facts

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• I do not think you should read about writing while you are writing.

  Maxwell Perkins

  Writing, Thinking, Should

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• It often puzzles me when people think that matters connected with sex ought to be suppressed. Sex itself cannot be suppressed, and the efforts to do it, it seems to me, result in greater damage than it can do itself. After all, it was not an invention of man, but of God.

  Maxwell Perkins

  Sex, Men, Thinking

  12 Copy quote

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