Publishers Quotes - Page 2

• When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

  Mark Twain

  Love, Funny, Motivational

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.121, Courier Corporation

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• God created war so that Americans would learn geography.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Funny, Life

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• Being made merely in the image of God but not otherwise resembling him enough to be mistaken by anybody but a very near sighted person.

  Mark Twain

  God, Differences, Editors

  Mark Twain (1972). “Everyone's Mark Twain”

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• The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Education

  Mark Twain (2015). “The Prince and the Pauper (StoneHenge Classics)”, p.154, StoneHenge Classics

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• 

  Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Cute, God

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.9262, Delphi Classics

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• The proverb says, "Born lucky, always lucky," and I am very superstitious. As a small boy I was notoriously lucky. It was usual for one or two of our lads (per annum) to get drowned in the Mississippi or in Bear Creek, but I was pulled out in a 2/3 drowned condition 9 times before I learned to swim, and was considered to be a cat in disguise.

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Humorous, Cat

  Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain’s Letters & Speeches (Annotated Edition)”, p.706, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Nothing helps scenery like bacon and eggs.

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Humorous, Food

  Mark Twain (2012). “The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations”, p.44, Courier Corporation

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• Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Life, Travel

  Mark Twain, Caroline Thomas Harnsberger (2009). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.479, Courier Corporation

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• The letters don't get their true delight, when done in haste & discomfort, nor merely done with diligence & pain, but first when they are created with love and passion.

  Giambattista Bodoni

  Love, Pain, Passion

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• Well, my book is written-let it go. But if it were only to write over again there wouldn't be so many things left out. They burn in me; and they keep multiplying; but now they can't ever be said. And besides, they would require a library-and a pen warmed up in hell.

  Mark Twain

  Letting Go, Book, Writing

  Mark Twain (1929). “Mark Twain's Letters”, p.284, Jazzybee Verlag

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• It is a wise child that knows its own father, and an unusual one that unreservedly approves of him.

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Wise, Fathers Day

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.121, Courier Corporation

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• At 50, a man can be an ass without being an optimist but not an optimist without being an ass

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Funny, Clever

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.14, Courier Corporation

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• I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Death, Sarcastic

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• Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth.

  Mark Twain

  Money, Entrepreneur, Poverty

  Mark Twain (2012). “The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations”, p.12, Courier Corporation

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• As a writer you know you don't have to deal with a lot of the crap that most people deal with, the political things. Every couple of years when your book comes out then you have to go into these fights with the publisher and the publicist and that's it.

  Robert Greene

  Couple, Book, Fighting

  "Big Think Interview With Robert Greene". Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. December 14, 2009.

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• The current publishing scene is extremely good for the big, popular books. They sell them brilliantly, market them and all that. It is not good for the little books. And really valuable books have been allowed to go out of print. In the old days, the publishers knew that these difficult books, the books that appeal only to a minority, were very productive in the long run. Because they're probably the books that will be read in the next generation.

  Doris Lessing

  Running, Book, Long

  "A Notorious Life". Interview with Dwight Garner, www.salon.com. November 11, 1997.

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• If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves.

  George Orwell

  Country, Worst Enemy, Editors

  George Orwell (2009). “Animal Farm: A Fairy Story”, p.206, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• In pulp fiction it is a rigid convention that the hero's shoulders and the heroine's balcon constantly threaten to burst their bonds, a possibility which keeps the audience in a state of tense expectancy. Unfortunately for the fans, however, recent tests reveal that the wisp of chiffon which stands between the publisher and the postal laws has the tensile strength of drop-forged steel.

  S. J. Perelman

  Hero, Law, Fans

  "Captain Future, Block That Kick!". "The Most of S. J. Perelman", p. 72, 1992.

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• No publisher will ever pay you enough to successfully sue them.

  Dave Sim

  Pay, Enough

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• If you feel like keeping a journal-that neither you nor anyone else on earth will ever want to read-be my guest. But if you want to write something that may eventually see the light of day, that a magazine might buy or a publisher publish, then you'll have to knock off the journaling and do the grunt work that real writing requires.

  Robert Masello

  Real, Writing, Light

  Robert Masello (2005). “Robert's Rules of Writing”, p.11, Writer's Digest Books

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• Snooki is a bestselling author? Huh? What? I don't know if I should dumb down my book, shoot myself or find a publisher who'll settle for a rough draft written on a Pop-Tart and a coconut lotion handie.

  Geoffrey Hill

  Book, Dumb, Rough Drafts

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• If you would like to write better than everybody else, you have to want to write better than everybody else. You must take an obsessive pride in the smallest details of your craft. And you must be willing to defend what you've written against the various middlemen - editors, agents and publishers - whose sights may be different from yours, whose standards not so high.

  William Zinsser

  Writing, Pride, Sight

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• The one affectation I have forced on the publisher... are my apostrophe-free ellisions. Because I write my scripts to read myself, I dont spell 'don't' with an apostrophe. I spell it 'dont'. We all know the word and it seems foolish to put in an extraneous apostrophe. Punctuation marks are devices we use to make the meaning of sentences clear. There is nothing confusing about a word like 'dont' printed without an apostrophe to indicate an omitted letter.

  Andy Rooney

  Writing, Punctuation Marks, Confusing

  "Years of Minutes: The Best of Rooney from 60 Minutes". Book by Andy Rooney (Foreword, p. 13), 2003.

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• The author of the extremely successful Twilight series was rejected by 14 different publishers before the 15th picked up Twilight. What would all the tweens do if Bella and Edward hadn't been brought to life?!

  Stephenie Meyer

  Twilight, Successful, Different

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• Novels are completed when they are finished, but the memoir changes its own conclusion by virtue of being written... I was not at all the same person, when I handed the manuscript to the publisher, as I had been when I began. A memoir may always be retrospective, but the past is not where its action takes place.

  Nuala O'Faolain

  Past, May, Action

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