Quotes About Literary Agents

#1. I wrote a query letter to an editor - a friend of a friend. The editor called me an idiot, told me never to contact an editor directly, and then recommended three literary agents he had worked with before. Laurie Fox was one of them, and I've never looked back.

Daniel H. Wilson

#2. The best source for finding an agent is called Literary Agents of North America. It's a complete list of agents, not only by name and address, but by type of book they represent and by what their submission criteria are.

Sara Paretsky

#3. I would never do a printed memoir. I've been asked to publish a memoir from years by different publishers and literary agents. I think it wouldn't be great for me because all I'd really want to talk about it music and I'd rather just play it.

Natalie Merchant

#4. Learn to fail with pride - and do so fast and cleanly. Maximise trial and error - by mastering the error part.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#5. We all loved him, and our slaves fairly worshipped the ground he trod.

Edgar Rice Burroughs

#6. It saddens me that a historic event like this is being misconstrued by a small but vocal group of critics trying to spread the notion that the UN gathering is really the work of radicals and atheists bent on destroying our families.

Hillary Clinton

#7. A time of darkness, despair, disillusion-so black only the inferno of the human mind can be-symbolic death, and numb shock-then the painful agony of slow rebirth and psychic regeneration

Sylvia Plath

#8. And I guess, I guess it's a humanist film. It's not really a spiritual film and it's, you know, it's saying that we're all one tribe of humans and we're on this little rock, floating through the universe and (Amenabar) has these (transitional shots of) POVs where you see humans like ants.

Rachel Weisz

#9. I call myself a literary agent simply to distinguish myself from actors' agents.

Irving Paul Lazar

#10. Respect depicts acceptance while disrespect is rejection.

Fawad Afzal Khan

#11. I didn't go to graduate school, where all the important writers seemed to be getting their start. I didn't pursue getting published in literary magazines. I didn't even send out countless pitch letters and manuscripts to agents.

Jami Attenberg

#12. I love the healthy exchange of information.

Brice Marden

#13. Babies arrive into the world crying and old people leave the world while others cry for them. Everything in between was colored by those two pillars ,she concluded early on.The capstone of human existence was sadness.

K.J. Kilton

#14. In leaving New York in 1957, I did leave without regret the literary demimonde of agents and would-be's and with-it nonparticipants; this world seemed unnutritious and interfering.

John Updike

#15. Stop trying, & start trusting.

Rick Warren

#16. Anything that was perverse and silly would be Kids in the Hall.

Kevin McDonald

#17. Mr Howard Saxby, literary agent, was knitting a sock. He knitted a good deal, he would tell you if you asked him, to keep himself from smoking, adding that he also smoked a good deal to keep himself from knitting.

P.G. Wodehouse

#18. For me, I work very self-contained. It's literally just me sitting in a room doing it until the very end of the process when other musicians come in and instruments are recorded.

Steven Price

#19. When I finally find that one willing agent, I'll have found my prize in the Cracker Jack box.

Richelle E. Goodrich

#20. A literary agent is nothing but a cheap salesman (or woman); while a writer is a cheap salesman (or woman) who also has to actually write the books.

John Hodgman