Published Quotes

#1. I had hoped to be a poet, and for a long time I tried to write poetry. My first published pieces were poems.

Norman Lock

#2. I went to work in an office and learned, among other lessons, to do things I did not care for, and to do them well. Before I left this office, two of my books had already been published.

Sigrid Undset

#3. A lot of poets too live on the margins of social acceptance, they certainly aren't in it for the money. William Blake - only his first book was legitimately published.

Jim Jarmusch

#4. Macmillan's rejection had left him very downcast ... Patrick Swift was invited to peruse the contents and decided that the poems should be published.

Patrick Kavanagh

#5. Of all the love stories ever published, I have - realistically - read very few.

Richard Flanagan

#6. In the early '90s, I was finishing up my adolescence. I visited my local comic-book store on a weekly basis, and one week I found a book on the stands called 'Xombi,' published by Milestone Media.

Gene Luen Yang

#7. Last week I was just someone who had had a first novel published.

Jon McGregor

#8. Crime fiction makes money. It may be harder for writers to get published, but crime is doing better than most of what we like to call CanLit. It's elementary, plot-driven, character-rich story-telling at its best.

Linwood Barclay

#9. I got brilliant stories from people who'd never set foot in an MFA program and had published very little, and terrible stories from people who'd published a lot and had all the credentials. It was all over the map and that was part of the fun.

Ben Fountain

#10. At best we are but clay, animated dust; but viewed as sinners, we are monsters indeed. Let it be published in heaven as a miracle that the Lord Jesus should set His heart's love upon people like us.

Alistair Begg

#11. I didn't make any money from my writing until much later. I published about 80 stories for nothing. I spent on literature.

Naguib Mahfouz

#12. The direct market has evolved into a machine that is very good at selling corporate-owned superhero titles published by two main companies: DC and Marvel.

Chris Roberson

#13. I would love mainland Chinese to read my book. There is a Chinese translation which I worked on myself, published in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Many copies have gone into China but it is still banned.

Jung Chang

#14. His book, The Dreams of Ada, was published by Viking in April 1987 and was greatly anticipated by the town.

John Grisham

#15. If only I had grown up worshipping Julia Child. I was already grown up - thank you very much - when Julia Child's book was published. When I moved to New York in 1962, you had to own it.

Nora Ephron

#16. The American war-writing tradition is a proud one and booming in this era of the Global War on Terror - at least in the nonfiction realm. Hundreds of memoirs and press accounts from Iraq and Afghanistan have been published since 9/11.

Matt Gallagher

#17. Garry Trudeau is the only cartoonist with the clout to get his strip published large enough to accomodate extended dialogue. It's ashame.

Bill Watterson

#18. In Los Angeles ... was the thinking-est crowd on earth: how to get ahead, how to mold a better body, how to have a better relationship, how to score, earn, fight, win, get published, be a star.

Caroline B. Cooney

#19. Having the urge to write a novel, especially if you've yet to be published, is like having a medical condition impossible to mention in polite company - it's a relief simply to know there are fellow-sufferers out there.

Robert Harris

#20. 'Britain's Royal Families' became my first published book, in 1989, from The Bodley Head, and the rest of the story is - dare I say it? - history!

Alison Weir

#21. Everybody should write a book whether you get it published or not because the experience of sort of taking it all and throwing it down on paper is unbelievably cathartic.

Gary Dell'Abate

#22. For several days after my first book was published, I carried it about in my pocket and took surreptitious peeps at it to make sure the ink had not faded.

James M. Barrie

#23. The first book, Doctor Syn: A Tale of the Romney Marsh was published in 1915.

Anonymous

#24. The imperfect book that gets published is better than the perfect book that never leaves my computer.

Gretchen Rubin

#25. I think many writers really believe that being published is a traumatic experience.

Lynne Tillman

#26. Before I had published anything, I still hung out with people who liked to write. None of us had published, so there was no talk about the business, and there was probably a lot more angsty talk back then. But these days maybe there are some more laments about the culture, but I would say no.

Chang-rae Lee

#27. Now, I had been drawing all this time - especially in France of course - so, when I came back, my father gave me the chance to do a cover for one of the books he published.

Dick Bruna

#28. I was nearly 40 when I published my first book. I was a slow starter - or rather, I was slow to gather my work together, though I had published translations, mainly of the Italian poet Montale, by then.

Jonathan Galassi

#29. I found myself immediately attracted to Pope John Paul II when, upon his election to the Papacy, his published speeches invariably called attention to the need for recognizing the dignity of the human being as a child of God.

Robert H. Schuller

#30. I had always presumed that my first book would be published, but I never dreamt that I would write 15 bestsellers and have this wonderful life in America that I have entirely built for myself.

Jane Green

#31. Preliminary research-most of it published outside the medical literature-indicates that a significant number of our patients have experienced some form of violence and abuse during their lifetime, including elder abuse, child abuse, gang-related violence, sexual abuse, and domestic violence.

David Schneider

#32. The expectation was that 'True Confessions' would be my first published book, but that didn't happen. After it was rejected by every publisher in New York and Canada, I shoved it in a closet and went on to write and publish my next three books.

Rachel Gibson

#33. The reason why it was published in the form of a micro sub-meson electronic component is that if it were printed in normal book form, an interstellar hitchhiker would require several inconveniently large buildings to carry it around

Douglas Adams

#34. No shame in having a ghostwriter," Storm said. "Some of the best books published every year are penned by talented writers whose identity the public will never know.

Richard Castle

#35. In 1969, nationwide, female professors who had never been married and never published earned 145% of their counterpart male colleagues.

Warren Farrell

#36. There was also a daughter, very short, very plump, very gay, an amazing production for the Gregorievitches. It was as if two very serious authors had set out to collaborate and then had published a limerick.

Rebecca West

#37. In 1890, Donnelly published Caesar's Column, a dystopian science fiction novel set in the far-off 1980s, when the United States had become a capitalist tyranny controlled by a ruthless Jewish oligarchy.

Arthur Goldwag

#38. I always say that my favorite game was Original Adventure, published by both Microsoft and Apple Computer back in 1980.

Roberta Williams

#39. What is it like to a be published author? Image clawing your beating heart from your chest and flopping it onto a plate for a room of food critiques expecting an ambrosia that conjures visions of Heaven. That comes pretty close.

Vallory Vance

#40. Before and after my debut, I've helped out other manga artists from time to time, but I have no experience of being exclusively an assistant. Nor have I done individual or self-published manga.

Natsuki Takaya

#41. I've got lots of books sitting here that have never been published because nobody could make any marketing sense of them.

Whitley Strieber

#42. I maintain an ongoing survey of Internet Publishing and self publishing, so that it is now possible for any writer with a book to get it published at nominal cost or free, and to have it on sale at booksellers like Amazon.

Piers Anthony

#43. If somebody says your story is only published because you look nice in the photo, that maybe spurs you on to write.

Nell Freudenberger

#44. Being a poet in the States is quite different from being one in China, because in the States poetry depends on the universities for its support. They finance the poets and help them get published. That isn't so in China. But overall it is the same. You can't change society with poetry.

Bei Dao

#45. However, I began to submit poems to British magazines, and some were accepted. It was a great moment to see my first poems published. It felt like entering a tradition.

Helen Dunmore

#46. My first book was published without any editorial advice. Nobody said, 'You might do this or that,' or 'Why don't we see more of this.' I merely took the book and published it.

James Salter

#47. Here's to the day when the complete works of Leon Trotsky are published and widely distributed in the Soviet Union. On that day the USSR will have achieved democracy!

C. Wright Mills

#48. It all goes back to this idea of ownership again. Once I published that book and my words became a commodity, something broke between us.

Lily King

#49. It took me seven years of writing before I published my first story. And then, the publications trickled in over the next five years.

Rob Roberge

#50. I enjoy it too much - even if I knew I'd never get a book published, I would still write. I enjoy the experience of getting thoughts and ideas and plots and characters organised into this narrative framework.

Iain Banks

#51. Much is published, but little printed.

Henry David Thoreau

#52. I'm a geophysicist who has conducted and published climate studies in top-rank scientific journals. My perspective on Mr. Inhofe and the issue of global warming is informed not only by my knowledge of climate science but also by my studies of the history and philosophy of science.

David Deming

#53. My stuff gets published in some countries as fiction and in some countries as fantasy. It's just where they think it will do best in the bookshops.

Neil Gaiman

#54. Being published is a bit like being entered into a race you don't even want to run, but, once running, can't help but not want to lose.

Samantha Harvey

#55. It is interesting to observe what the Cynic teaching became when it was popularized. In the early part of the third century B.C., the cynics were the fashion, especially in Alexandria. They published little sermons pointing out how easy it is to do without material possessions,

Bertrand Russell

#56. The solution, once revealed, must seem to have been inevitable. At least half of all the mystery novels published violate this law.
(Casual Notes on the Mystery Novel, 1949)

Raymond Chandler

#57. I remember when they started publishing Latino fiction years ago. You had to be really good to get published. Now you don't have to be that good.

Sandra Cisneros

#58. I recently published a new book. It's a Christian urban fantasy about mad science gone wrong. And then after I'd written that in a blurb I thought to myself - when does mad science ever go right?!

Greg Curtis

#59. More than 38 percent of women report depressive symptoms after deployment, compared with about 32 percent of men, according to a study published by the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Anonymous

#60. I don't think music affects what words I choose to type in what order, within what punctuation, at this point, because I'm rereading and editing each sentence, at this point, in my published books, probably 100-150 times each, on average, and listening to probably 20-60 different songs in that time.

Tao Lin

#61. I'd been assured, at age 21 or so, by a well-known editor who saw the first part of The Secret History in what was basically its final form, that it would never be published because "no woman has ever written a successful novel from a male point of view."

Donna Tartt

#62. Avoid the RTP Syndrome. When you rush to Publish, you rush to mistakes and chaos. Guaranteed.

Judith Briles

#63. The printed word will be around long after many of our digital creations are gone, either because books don't require monthly hosting, and blogs and websites do ... or because the languages and platforms for which a particular digital creation was published will become obsolete.

Jeffrey Zeldman

#64. I've gotten books published. I've met famous people that are very nice. I look back and I say, 'Wow. Thank you, God, for giving me this gift. And thank you for helping me to keep going.'

Mattie Stepanek

#65. Writing is also an art.

Marc Mullo

#66. 'The Red' is the first book in a trilogy that gained a big following as a self-published e-book, and is now out in paper from Saga. It introduces us to reluctant hero Shelley, a former anti-war activist who chooses to join the military rather than serve jail time after being arrested at a protest.

Annalee Newitz

#67. Wilke subscribed to the principles laid out in a seminal book about constraints in manufacturing, Eliyahu M. Goldratt's The Goal, published in 1984.

Brad Stone

#68. I'm called the Godfather [of Ecstacy] because I published for the first time information about its effects in man. I feel content with the title. MDMA is a beautiful drug ...

Alexander Shulgin

#69. Just keep writing, and try to finish that novel. Remember, all authors started exactly where you are right now; the only difference between a published author and a non-published one is that the published author never stopped writing.

Julie Kagawa

#70. Just remember that William Blake wasn't even published in his lifetime. Ya gotta keep creating.

Kris Kristofferson

#71. I think it's very, very, very hard to get a book published. I never want to be one of those teachers that say, 'don't do this, ' because how sad would the world be if people didn't create art and write? But, it's not an easy journey being a writer.

Alyson Richman

#72. Johannes Kepler published his book Harmonices Mundi in 1619. In it he proposed that it was the Creator who "decorated" the whole world, using mathematical and musical harmonic proportions. The spiritual and the physical are united.

David Byrne

#73. I wrote Rick before I was published, and I had no vision of it, really. It was just a story that occurred to me, and that put its little claws in my brain, and I wrote it, and I showed it to a couple people, and they all said, "This is ghastly."

Daniel Handler

#74. I have always wanted to be a published author. I write baseball books because I love the sport.

Jonathan Weeks

#75. Beast Books will be longer than conventional long-form magazine articles but shorter than conventional nonfiction books. They will be published digitally and distributed on multiple platforms, and will soon thereafter be available as handy paperbacks.

Tina Brown

#76. The state was founded, actually, I think the year that Nineteen Eighty-Four was published. And it's as if they sort of took the book and thought, I wonder if we could make this work?

Christopher Hitchens

#77. I wrote eight full-length adult novels in my twenties. None of them were published.

Caroline B. Cooney

#78. On one occasion in 1987 the security police came looking for me because of a drawing that I'd published.

Jonathan Shapiro

#79. Even if I couldn't get my early novels published, I could still write. I went into newspapers, where I got paid to write every day. If there's a better school for would-be novelists, I don't know what it is.

Linwood Barclay

#80. For nearly twenty years I have been a published author ... But I have never yet seen a book of mine offered for sale in a shop window.

George Bernard Shaw

#81. 'being published' is not the same as being a real writer.

Scarlett Thomas

#82. I feel like a divorced wife once my book is published and has left me, and hate to be brought back into intimate contact!

Freya Stark

#83. I was first published as a paranormal author back in the early 1990s. I was one of the founders of that original wave of paranormal and am the leader of the new wave of paranormal that started at the beginning of this century.

Sherrilyn Kenyon

#84. Very few people, thank God, look like the pictures of them which are published in the papers and the weekly magazines ...

Ilka Chase

#85. Really the answers I get are idiotic. The entire correspondence of you and Robbie with me should be published. The best title would be Letters from Two Idiots to a Lunatic, I should fancy.

Oscar Wilde

#86. Before publication, and if provided by persons whose judgment you trust, yes, of course criticism helps. But after something is published, all I want to read or hear is praise.

Truman Capote

#87. No one inspired me to write, but writer Harlan Ellison terrified me into getting published.

Dan Simmons

#88. I had a few stories and longer pieces published, but my first proper novel came in 2003, called 'Dead I Well May Be.'

Adrian McKinty

#89. While I was writing I assumed it would be published under a pseudonym, and that liberated me: what I wrote was exactly what I wanted to read.

Nicholson Baker

#90. If any sort of error is inexcusable, it's an incorrect phone number. One of the cardinal rules of copy editing is that every phone number published must be checked.

Bill Walsh

#91. It's not as if I've been unlucky. My books have been published and reviewed. I haven't lived through terrible literary suffering!

Siri Hustvedt

#92. Of the first seven novels I wrote, numbers four and five were published. Numbers one, two, three, six, and seven, have never seen the light of day ... and rightly so.

Sue Grafton

#93. That author, however, who has thought more than he has read, read more than he has written, and written more than he has published, if he does not command success, has at least deserved it.

Charles Caleb Colton

#94. How many murders are committed in Gauteng, or in the Western Cape, in a month? A week? A day? An hour? But of course we are not allowed to know for sure. In close and direct imitation of his apartheid models, Selebi ensures that no statistics about crime may be published regularly in the press.

Thabo Mbeki

#95. I published only in academic journals in philosophy until I was in my 40s, but I had been writing fiction and poetry my whole adult life - without ever once trying to publish it, and rarely letting anyone read it.

Cheryl Mendelson

#96. The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it.

Aaron Swartz

#97. You can put suspenders on a salamander, but it still won't make waffles. See what I mean? That sentence makes absolutely no sense, but I got paid to write it. It's printed right here in a published book!

Dave Barry

#98. It's funny, particularly when you're a writer and you're doing well, you have that sense of like, "Oh! My view of the world is the one that's going to be published."

Daniel Handler

#99. I could give you some names of Workshop participants who are as good as many who are being published but haven't had the right editor recognize their merit or have not been adequately published.

James Gunn

#100. To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all.

Aleister Crowley