Manuscript quotes:

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  • Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure. -- Oliver Herford
  • Alas, that Spring should vanish with the Rose! That Youths sweet-scented Manuscript should close! -- Omar Khayyam
  • Well, certainly the Voynich Manuscript is the 'limit text' of Western occultism. No one can read it. It is truly an occult book. -- Terence McKenna
  • Talking to Lee Child and discovering, from his chapter in The Chopin Manuscript, that he's even more of an audio geek than I am (as his chapter in Chopin proves). -- David Hewson
  • Manuscript editions didn't immediately die out with the printing explosion that burst across Europe in the 1460s and 1470s. Manuscripts continued to be produced into the 16th century, many decades after presses had spread to most minor cities in Western Europe. -- Ian Lamont
  • 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 public Manuscript, that lies expans'd unto the eyes of all; those that never saw him in the one, have discovered him in the other. -- Thomas Browne
  • The Rift, which was well over a thousand pages of manuscript, took two years. -- Walter Jon Williams
  • The ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript. -- Aleister Crowley
  • I became a connoisseur of that nasty thud a manuscript makes when it comes through the letter box. -- James Herriot
  • Books can now be on the stands within days from delivery of a formatted manuscript, and often are. -- Bruce Jackson
  • Traditional publishers require an author to submit a manuscript six months in advance, and if pressed, no later than two or three. -- Heather Brooke
  • 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
  • Cut your manuscript ruthlessly but never throw anything away: it's amazing how often a discarded scene or description, which wouldn't fit in one place, will work perfectly later. -- Robert Harris
  • I began writing 'Matterhorn' in 1975 and for more than 30 years I kept working on my novel in my spare time, unable to get an agent or publisher to even read the manuscript. -- Karl Marlantes
  • If you look at an illuminated manuscript, even today, it just blows your mind. For them, without all the clutter and inputs that we have, it must have been even more extraordinary. -- Geraldine Brooks
  • 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 piles. I have had a wonderful time. -- Vikas Swarup
  • A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor. -- Ring Lardner
  • With a computer, you make your changes on the screen and then you print out a clean copy. With a typewriter, you can't get a clean manuscript unless you start again from scratch. It's an incredibly tedious process. -- Paul Auster
  • Creativity runs across many categories in life, from the arts-and-crafts project a mum or dad does with their kids, to the bestselling author's manuscript, to the designs of the hairdresser, to the creations of the computer programming genius. -- Tabatha Coffey
  • I wanted to write something visual that I could read to the children. This was when I created the idea of Redwall Abbey in my imagination. As I wrote, the idea grew, and the manuscript along with it. -- Brian Jacques
  • Often I sort of work up and down the manuscript. I sometimes used to go ahead of myself to see what was going to happen next, to make certain it fits what was going to be happening soon. -- Terry Pratchett
  • When I was growing up the publishing world seemed so far away. When my mother wrote a book, she would look up the address of publishers on the backs of the books she owned and send off her manuscript. -- Kiran Desai
  • 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
  • I wrote one terrible manuscript after another for a decade and I guess they gradually got a little less terrible. But there were many, many unpublished short stories, abandoned screenplays and novels... a Library of Congress worth of awful literature. -- Seth Grahame-Smith
  • If you want to send a manuscript, send it to an agent. And send a letter first, asking permission. Launch it into the real world of cold-blooded commercial response, not into the fantasyland of wishful thinking, cowardice and surrender to Resistance. -- Steven Pressfield
  • Sometimes I have given my husband a manuscript to read that has turned out to have fantastic rave reviews and he'll tell me it is no good. Well, if I didn't know him as well as I know him I would be terribly depressed. -- Katherine Dunham
  • I think we are waiting for an e-book that even non-techies can be comfortable with. From my point of view, the biggest change is that I don't have to spend most of the day printing out and packaging a manuscript. I think I almost miss that. -- Terry Pratchett
  • I have a color-coded computer spreadsheet that divides things down to chapter fragments. Each character's point-of-view is a different color. The text of the manuscript is color-coded the same way. The last thing I do before submitting the manuscript is turn all those colors back to black. -- Neal Shusterman
  • In my office in Florida I have, I think, 30 manuscript piles around the room. Some are screenplays or comic books or graphic novels. Some are almost done. Some I'm rewriting. If I'm working with a co-writer, they'll usually write the first draft. And then I write subsequent drafts. -- James Patterson
  • 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
  • When you start writing a picture book, you have to write a manuscript that has enough language to prompt the illustrator to get his or her gears running, but then you end up having to cut it out because you don't want any of the language to be redundant to the pictures that are being drawn. -- Daniel Handler
  • The manuscript looks chaotic, even by mathematics standards. -- George Andrews
  • A manuscript not submitted is a book not published. -- Dan Poynter
  • The manuscript in the drawer either rots or ripens. -- Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
  • Egypt has managed to reclaim the 13-page papyrus manuscript. -- Zahi Hawass
  • This was a manuscript of the night we couldn't read. -- Jack Kerouac
  • Seventeen publishers rejected the manuscript, at which time we knew we had something pretty hot. -- Kinky Friedman
  • [I]n the long run it's worthwhile to see the manuscript as a text capable of improvement. -- Barbara Sjoholm
  • Transforms old print To zigzag manuscript, and cheats the eyes Of gallery critics by a thousand arts. -- William Cowper
  • The unpublished manuscript is like an uncon-fessed sin that festers in the soul, corrupting and contaminating it. -- Antonio Machado
  • Sometimes I can spend as long revising a manuscript as I spent writing it in the first place. -- Margaret Haddix
  • In bitter manuscript remarks on other men's notions about solar deities, he had become indifferent to the sunlight. -- George Eliot
  • It is not as easy to emigrate with steel mills as it is with the manuscript of a novel. -- Golo Mann
  • I think once you have done all you can to a manuscript, let it find its way in the world. -- Chinua Achebe
  • 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
  • Would you please publish the enclosed manuscript or return it without delay, as I have other irons in the fire. -- Elinor Glyn
  • I'm reading a manuscript by Rodney Jones, "Village Prodigies",it's one of the best contemporary poetry books I've ever read ever. -- Stephen Dobyns
  • You know your heart and soul are stapled to that manuscript, but what we see are the words on the paper -- Teresa Nielsen Haydense
  • Our life is a book to which we add daily, until suddenly we are finished, and then the manuscript is burned. -- James M. Barrie
  • To visit Morocco is still like turning the pages of some illuminated Persian manuscript all embroidered with bright shapes and subtle lines. -- Edith Wharton
  • I thought it was amazing to work with authors, to get a manuscript and try to make up a cover for it. -- Dick Bruna
  • I can tell from about 20 yards away when someone has a manuscript for me. I can just tell - they have that look. -- Mark Leyner
  • The question of manuscript changes is very important for literary criticism, the psychology of creation and other aspects of the study of literature. -- Umberto Eco
  • Why is this soe long detaind in a dark manuscript, that if printed would be a Light to the World, & a Universal Blessing? -- Thomas Traherne
  • The manuscript may go forth from the writer to return with a faithfulness passing the faithfulness of the boomerang or the homing pigeon. -- Rose Macaulay
  • When the adversaries of Erasmus had got the Trinity into his edition, they threw by their manuscript as an old almanac out of date. -- Isaac Newton
  • A novelist can never be his own reader, except when he is ridding his manuscript of syntax errors, repetitions, or the occasional superfluous paragraph. -- Patrick Modiano
  • The border between editing and ghostwriting is, at its extremes, a bit porous. An editor really improves and sometimes restructures a manuscript and suggests changes. -- Judith Thurman
  • The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case, He turns his quid of tobacco, while his eyes blur with the manuscript. -- Walt Whitman
  • I think the trick of writing a good picture book manuscript is to leave that space for illustration. An illustrated novel can do the same thing. -- Mac Barnett
  • Instead of taking a year off, I started 'Dreamers of the Day' exactly 36 hours after I sent the manuscript for 'A Thread of Grace' to the publisher! -- Mary Doria Russell
  • You should be writing for the love of the story, and when it comes time to return to the manuscript, everything else belongs behind a closed door. -- Michael Koryta
  • Instead of taking a year off, I started Dreamers of the Day exactly 36 hours after I sent the manuscript for A Thread of Grace to the publisher! -- Mary Doria Russell
  • When you print out your manuscript and read it, marking up with a pen, it sometimes feels like a criminal returning to the scene of a crime. -- Don Roff
  • Trends come and go, and if you try to latch onto a trend it will likely be passé by the time you have completed your manuscript. -- Andrew McAleer
  • 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
  • Edit your manuscript until your fingers bleed and you have memorized every last word. Then, when you are certain you are on the verge of insanityedit one more time! -- C.K. Webb
  • 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
  • I've always worked at the piano; I like to hear what I'm doing, I like the sound, to hear the actual sound. I get bored just looking at a manuscript. -- Richard Meale
  • If Elmore Leonard met Jim Thompson down a dark alley at midnight they might emerge a week later with thick beards, bloodshot eyes and the manuscript for THE BIG O. -- Eoin Colfer
  • But, as all scientists know, there is a time lag of 12 to 18 months between the time a manuscript is submitted and the time it is published in a scientific journal. -- Paul Harvey
  • Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it - whole-heartedly - and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings. -- Arthur Quiller-Couch
  • And, finally, 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
  • I have a manuscript that I'm almost done with, but I've been saying that forever. I'm on what I think will be the second-to-last chapter. It's a story about chance and coincidence. -- Mary E. Pearson
  • Characters are incredibly important, but I tend to build them around the plot during the outline stage. However, once I'm writing the manuscript, the characters I'm writing dictate how the plot unfolds. -- Aimee Carter
  • When I was in England, I had seen advertisements about typing agencies; I had learned that if you really want to make a good impression, you should have your manuscript well typed. -- Chinua Achebe
  • J. K. Rowling's first 'Harry Potter' manuscript was rejected 12 times. Stephen King's 'Carrie' was rejected 30 times. 'Gone With The Wind' was rejected 38 times. I was immensely proud to have beaten them all. -- Ashwin Sanghi
  • Remember, it is no sign of weakness or defeat that your manuscript ends up in need of major surgery. This is a common occurrence in all writing, and among the best writers. -- William Strunk, Jr.
  • An unedited manuscript is a first draft of story; but is not a finished product. Too many writers study the craft of writing but do not acquire the skills of an editor. -- Michael J. Kannengieser
  • 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
  • Sometimes I do work on a longer manuscript in tandem with one or two shorter pieces - whether it's a short story or an essay (though I don't write many of the latter). -- Christine Sneed
  • To me, all the juice of a book is in an unpublished manuscript, and the published book is like a dead tree - just good for cutting up and building your house with. -- Christina Stead
  • I was eighteen when I wrote my first book, and I can't remember what it was called. I have no idea where the manuscript is - I lost it when I was twenty-one. -- Cynthia Voigt
  • It was in a stonecutter's house where I went to have a headstone made for Raftery's grave that I found a manuscript book of his poems, written out in the clear beautiful Irish characters. -- Lady Gregory
  • I starved and slept on park benches. I wrapped myself in the pages of my manuscript to keep warm. For two and a half years I took odd jobs; nothing was going to deter me. -- Gary Jennings
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