Manuscripts Quotes - Page 5

How is it that, a full two centuries after Jane Austen finished her manuscript, we come to the world of Pride and Prejudice and find ourselves transcending customs, strictures, time, mores, to arrive at a place that educates, amuses, and enthralls us? It is a miracle. We read in bed because reading is halfway between life and dreaming, our own consciousness in someone else's mind.

Anna Quindlen

Dream, Reading, Pride

Anna Quindlen (2010). “How Reading Changed My Life”, p.20, Ballantine Books

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Will a day come when the race will detect the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at them—and by laughing at them destroy them? For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, Money, Persuasion, Supplication, Persecution--these can lift at a colossal humbug,—push it a little— crowd it a little—weaken it a little, century by century: but only Laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand. - "The Chronicle of Young Satan," Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts

Mark Twain

Laughter, Blow, Race

The Mysterious Stranger ch. 10 (1916)

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That a thing made by hand, the work and thought of a single craftsman, can endure much longer than its maker, through centuries in fact, can survive natural catastrophe, neglect, and even mistreatment, has always filled me with wonder. Sometimes in museums, looking at a humble piece of pottery from ancient Persia or Pompeii, or a finely wrought page from a medieval illuminated manuscript toiled over by a nameless monk, or a primitive tool with a carved handle, I am moved to tears. The unknown life of the maker is evanescent in its brevity, but the work of his or her hands and heart remains.

Susan Vreeland

Heart, Humble, Hands

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My books piled up before me for my use waiting in space where I placed them, they haven't disappeared, time's left its remnants and qualities for me to use -- my words piled up, my texts, my manuscripts, my loves.

Allen Ginsberg

Book, Space, Waiting

Allen Ginsberg (2001). “Howl and Other Poems: Pocket Poets Number 4”, p.32, City Lights Publishers

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When I knew what I had to do / I took all my notebooks, all my manuscripts / and ate them page by page / so I could take my words with me

Nicole Blackman

Notebook, Pages

Nicole Blackman (2002). “Blood Sugar”, Akashic Books

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I still love books. Nothing a computer can do can compare to a book. You can't really put a book on the Internet. Three companies have offered to put books by me on the Net, and I said, 'If you can make something that has a nice jacket, nice paper with that nice smell, then we'll talk.' All the computer can give you is a manuscript. People don't want to read manuscripts. They want to read books. Books smell good. They look good. You can press it to your bosom. You can carry it in your pocket.

Ray Bradbury

Nice, Book, Smell

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There are too many people in the world as it is, but the supply of ancient manuscripts is severely limited.

Barbara Mertz

People, World, Ancient

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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, it's not War and Peace anymore; it's comic-book stuff. Your manuscript is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

Samuel Johnson

War, Book, Writing

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A lot of manuscripts that come in, you wonder by what outrageous fantasy the author believes that this should be pressed into print.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Believe, Fantasy, Wonder

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There is never finality in the display terminal's screen, but an irresponsible whimsicality, as words, sentences, and paragraphs are negated at the touch of a key. The significance of the past, as expressed in the manuscript by a deleted word or an inserted correction, is annulled in idle gusts of electronic massacre.

Alexander Cockburn

Past, Keys, Massacres

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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 late 20s and early 30s, people in our graduate program who are already working on a manuscript and trying to bring it to completion.

Tobias Wolff

Inspirational, Funny, Graduation

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All writers are crazy. So never mind what the editors and your family and your critique group tells you. Submit your manuscripts and keep submitting until you get an offer. Then you can be crazy, with a paycheck.

MaryJanice Davidson

Crazy, Writing, Editors

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My love for my children makes me glad that I am what I am, and keeps me from desiring to be otherwise; and yet, when I sometimes open a little box in which I still keep my fast yellowing manuscripts, the only tangible remnants of a vanished dream, a dead ambition, a sacrificed talent, I cannot repress the thought, that after all I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage

James Weldon Johnson

Dream, Children, Ambition

James Weldon Johnson (2009). “James Weldon Johnson: The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man”, p.199, ReadHowYouWant.com

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Seventeen publishers rejected the manuscript, at which time we knew we had something pretty hot.

Kinky Friedman

Writing, Hot, Rejected

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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 that some day they'll send back money.

Edna Buchanan

Children, Book, Writing

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The inerrancy of Scripture means that scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact.

Wayne Grudem

Mean, Doe, Scripture

Wayne A. Grudem (2009). “Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine”, p.83, Harper Collins

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I don't listen to music when I write, but I do turn on appropriate music when I read portions of my manuscripts back to myself - kind of like adding a soundtrack to help shape mood.

Erik Larson

Writing, Shapes, Helping

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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,' but rather the one who will toss the manuscript down in disgust, with 'You know better than that! It's rotten! Do it all over again!'

Henry Sydnor Harrison

Writing, Rotten, Toss

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The Polar Express was the easiest of my picture book manuscripts to write... Once I realized the train was going to the North Pole, finding the story seemed less like a creative effort than an act of recollection. I felt, like the storys narrator, that I was remembering something, not making it up.

Chris Van Allsburg

Book, Writing, Effort

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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 could have helped that!

David Herbert Donald

Prepared, Speakers

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I won't leave any unfinished manuscripts.

Harold Robbins

Unfinished

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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 most proud of is the one no one will ever see - the very first manuscript I ever wrote, back in 1990. It took me a year to do it.

Steve Berry

Children, Book, Years

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A thing may in itself be the finest piece of writing one has ever done, and yet have absolutely no place in the manuscript one hopes to publish.

Carolyn Forche

Writing, Done, Pieces

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As a writer, you have control of the words you put on the page. But once that manuscript leaves your hand, you give control to the reader. As a director, you are limited by everything: weather, budget, and egos.

Nicholas Meyer

Hands, Weather, Giving

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The most obvious – and easiest! – way to gain perspective is to put your work away for a while.
The truth is, we don’t know how taking a break frees up the mind, but it does: Somehow it freshens our little neurons, or perhaps it prompts the brain to create more cleverness molecules.
If you can bear to let a short piece sit a week and a book-length work a month, do so. Longer is fine, too; some authors have abandoned manuscripts for years before unearthing them and realizing, ‘Hey, this isn’t bad,’ and renewing their energy for the project.

Elizabeth Sims

Book, Years, Perspective

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