Quotes About Your First Book

#1. ...you are a writer the moment you start writing, not when you've sold your first book.

Rob Bignell, Editor

#2. Trying to have your first book read when you're a perfect stranger feels like waving at people, in a dark room, when everyone is looking the opposite direction!
Painfully frustrating!!!

Charles Bonnaire

#3. When you do your first book, you're just like, "This is my work." And it's just this whole other world that you throw yourself into.

Bryan Lee O'Malley

#4. When you write your first book aged 25 or so, you have 25 years of experience, albeit much of it juvenile experience. The second book comes after an extra year sitting in bookshops. Pretty soon, you begin to run on empty.

Douglas Adams

#5. Your first book already defines you, while you are really far from being defined. And this definition is something you may then carry with you for the rest of your life, trying to confirm it or extend or correct or deny it; but you can never eliminate it.

Italo Calvino

#6. Your first book is the only one that matters. Perhaps a writer should write only that one. That is the one moment when you make the big leap; the opportunity to express yourself is offered that once, and you untie the knot within you then or never again.

Italo Calvino

#7. Your first book is the promise you make.

Toni Jenkins

#8. I very much love a physical book myself. I think people who have had this experience of also seeing a book come together, from sitting down and writing the first word, to holding the binding in your hand, we have a deeper sentimental attachment to it than others might.

Edwidge Danticat

#9. THE FIRST CHAPTER, MARCUS, is essential. If the readers don't like it, they won't read the rest of your book. How do you plan to begin yours?

Joel Dicker

#10. Get a book, so you know where to put your fingers. Otherwise it would be tough to learn. Also you have to fight through getting callouses on your fingers because it hurts, you are pressing your fingers on metal strings, they will hurt at first until you start building up callouses.

Joan Jett

#11. They say 90% of the promotion of a book comes through word of mouth. But you've somehow got to get your book into the hands of those mouths first!

Claudia Osmond

#12. A really well-done first draft of a book bares your soul. The purpose of revision is so that everyone who reads the published version believes you were writing about theirs.

James A. Owen

#13. And just so you know - that winter forest we walked into first? That was from Through the Looking Glass too. Hey, if you're going to saddle me with the blame for your overconsumption, at least get the book right.

Elle Lothlorien

#14. Dear Judy Blume, why didn't you write a book about how to survive talking to your centuries-old, super-duper experienced, smoking-hot soul mate about sex for the first time ever? That book would have been extremely helpful in preparing me for this incredibly awkward situation.

Karen Amanda Hooper

#15. When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write.

Ernest Hemingway,

#16. Life is going to happen to you. Your destiny will be found in how you respond to life. Most let fate find them; the few find their destiny.

Shay Dawkins

#17. First of all there will appear to you, swifter than lightning, the luminous splendor of the colorless light of Emptiness, and that will surround you on all sides ... Try to submerge yourself in that light, giving up all belief in a separate self, all attachment to your illusory ego.

Gautama Buddha

#18. Aim to write for an hour per day. I used to be a teacher, and an hour a day before school was all it took for me to write my first book. Don't get discouraged if a holiday or illness interrupts your writing habit. Just start it up again.

Caroline Lawrence

#19. Communication is a major key to building any strong relationship, whether it is the relationship one has with oneself or with others. Sinful communication weakens yourself, weakens those you care about, and thus weakens your team.

Shay Dawkins

#20. Strong self-esteem depends on two things. The first is what most of this book has been about: learning to think in healthy ways about yourself. The second key to self-esteem is the ability to make things happen, to see what you want and go for it: literally to create your own life.

Matthew McKay

#21. Sometime during your life - in fact, very soon - you may find yourself reading a book, and you may notice that a book's first sentence can often tell you what sort of story your book contains.

Lemony Snicket

#22. The great thing about books was the solidity of the written word. You might change and your reading might change as a result, but the book remained whatever it had always been. A good book was surprising the first time through, less so the second.

Karen Joy Fowler

#23. Use your intuition. Picture how things happen, why they happen. Don't stick rigidly to first impressions, and once you've read the rule book, throw it away. Better still, burn the bastard.

Andrew Barrett

#24. I wish I could explain how I feel, but nothing can explain this moment. Not a vase of stars. Not a book. Not a song. Not even a poem. Nothing can explain the moment when the woman you would give your life for sees her daughter for the very first time.

Colleen Hoover

#25. As Harvard Business School professor Peter Bregman advises, 'Don't write a book, write a page...Don't expect to be a great manager in your first six months, just try to set expectations well.

Shawn Achor

#26. The first essential in any book is that it have something significant to say --a book that leaves the reader with bigger ideas than when he began reading - that stimulates his thinking, stretches his mind, deepens his feelings. A good book sticks to your ribs.

Rebecca Caudill

#27. Come to a book as you would come to an unexplored land. Come without a map. Explore it, and draw your own map ... A book is like a pump. It gives nothing unless first you give to it.

Stephen King

#28. The first page sells this book. The last page sells your next book.

Mickey Spillane

#29. Dear Nancy,
I love your book The Crystal Navigator. You paint beautiful imagery throughout the pages of the story, and I loved learning about art through the adventures of Lucy. I'm honored to be one of the first readers of your wonderful story,
Sincerely,
Sylvie" (11 years old)

Sylvie

#30. Yield, and I'll eat your little pussy... first.

Setta Jay

#31. An idea can change your fate in a wonderful way but you must first let the idea to touch your mind and your heart! No closed book can ever be your hero!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

#32. Your MY first girlfriend I ever had
Your MY first boyfriend I ever had

Me

#33. A romp in the hay lingers like the first line of a song, but your true love is the one you make a life with and write more than a line about, you write a whole book.

Garrison Keillor

#34. For a professional writer in the Soviet Union, it works this way. First, you have to have something to say - that's the main thing. Second, it's a matter of who publishes you. If your book has real stuff in it, readers will ferret it out, even in a Siberian journal.

Anatoly Rybakov

#35. The moment you first encounter a particular book is the right time to read it. To avoid missing that moment, I recommend that you keep your collection small.

Marie Kondo

#36. If somebody says to you the quote"don't judge the book by its cover", then better first close your eyes for a moment and try not to judge anybody at all. Even much better if you don't have to believe in 100% with that quote.

Toba Beta

#37. To face a real daemon, you must first look inwards and conquer your own darkness.

Luis Marques

#38. REVIEW, v.t. To set your wisdom (holding not a doubt of it./ Although in truth there's neither bone nor skin to it)/ At work upon a book, and so read out of it/ The qualities that you have first read into it.

Ambrose Bierce

#39. I ended my first book with the words 'no answer.' I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice? Only words, words; to be led out to battle against other words.

C.S. Lewis

#40. I started my career as an actor, then morphed into a playwright who accidentally became a novelist with my first book 'Fall On Your Knees.'

Ann-Marie MacDonald

#41. The first book is the book you have to write to get back at your parents; the book you always had in you. Once you get that out of your way, you can start writing books,

Shirley Jackson

#42. The first education should be the harmonious development of the child's physical, mental and spiritual powers. Providing warm and understanding responses to your children's 'hearts' accomplishes far more than pressuring book knowledge into their minds.

Dorothy Moore

#43. Me Kate. You Tarzan?"
"No." Curran bared his teeth at me. "In the first book, he grabs a lion by the tail and pulls it. Never gonna happen. First, an adult male lion weights five hundred pounds. Second, you grab my tail, I'll turn around and take your face off.

Ilona Andrews

#44. Let your daughter have first of all the book of Psalms for holiness of heart, and be instructed in the Proverbs of Solomon for her godly life.

St. Jerome

#45. Andi Teran's first novel is vivid and fully realized, an entire universe expertly condensed into the pages you hold in your hands. Ana herself is a complicated delight, and by the end of the book I wanted to scoop her up into my arms.

Emma Straub

#46. If you don't start going after WHAT YOU WANT, then you will NEVER GET WHAT YOU WANT! Do you want to be on your death bed wondering, 'WHAT IF? WHAT IF I would've quit letting life pass me by and just went for it?!' JUST GO FOR IT! LIVE ALL OUT!

Shay Dawkins

#47. Three Steps to Mastery First, read in your field for at least one hour every day. Get up a little earlier in the morning and read for thirty to sixty minutes in a book or magazine that contains information that can help you to be more effective and productive at what you do. Second,

Brian Tracy

#48. A lot of writers that I know have told me that the first book you write, you write about your childhood, whether you want to or not. It calls you back.

Tea Obreht

#49. One 'Magic Formula' is for you to become your own best friend and your own biggest critic SIMULTANEOUSLY.

Shay Dawkins

#50. No one is capable of loving you like you can love you. Embrace your uniqueness; your uniqueness is what makes you special and great.

Shay Dawkins

#51. I went to a bookstore to try to find a book. The bottom line is, it all comes by trial and error. It was scary and exciting at first you don't know what to expect. But once you look into your child's eyes, you forget about that.

Michael Jordan

#52. I have read or been told that in a book of etiquette of the seventeenth century the very first rule forbids you to tell your dreams to other people, since they cannot possibly be of interest to them.

Isak Dinesen

#53. Learn to take criticism. Your first draft won't be perfect, and it's damaging to the book to think that it is. Every great book you've ever read has been rewritten a dozen times. This is the hardest think to learn (trust me), but very, very important.

Patrick Ness

#54. Cousin-screwing. It is not totally safe. It raises the risk of birth defects slightly. But I was reading in a book for history that there's, like, a 99.9999 percent chance that at least one of your great-great-great-grandparents married first cousin.

John Green

#55. You are the first of your kind. Books will be written about you. Be the legend you are meant to be. - Astral

Candace Knoebel

#56. I look at my first books and am glad they weren't published ... You start writing by imitating your heroes, then you keep the heart of that worship in your work. As time goes by, you get other influences and find your own voice.

Markus Zusak

#57. You plant a garden one flower at a time ... You write a book one word at a time, clean a closet one shelf at a time, run a marathon one step at a time. If you feel defeated by some large task, get your spade and dig the first hole.

Jeanne Marie Laskas

#58. If you still don't like a book after slogging through the first 50 pages, set it aside. If you're more than 50 years old, subtract your age from 100 and only grant it that many pages.

Nancy Pearl

#59. Hey, O Holy One, if the only people you want to read your book are the ones who already agree with everything in it, what was your point in the first place? Isn't the goal to reach non-believers?

Antony John

#60. If your like a powerful modern thriller with an historical core in the Scandinavian style of many separate threads which eventually come together, Purple Killing will grip you. It is my latest book and a companion to Hitler's First Lady, but in a very different style. Set equally in the US and UK.

Malcolm Blair-Robinson

#61. When 'Tracks' first came out, I was courted by Sydney Pollack. I had lunch with him, and he opened the conversation with, 'Honey, you ain't gonna like what I'm gonna do to your book.' I really liked him, but I turned him down, because - well, I was stupid. I also turned down a great deal of money.

Robyn Davidson

#62. She rolled her eyes. "If it pleases Your Magnanimous Holiness, I shall call you by your first name." " 'Magnanimous Holiness'? Oh, I like that one." A ghost of a smile appeared on her face, and Dorian looked down at the book.

Sarah J. Maas

#63. When you read a book, the neurons in your brain fire overtime, deciding what the characters are wearing, how they're standing, and what it feels like the first time they kiss. No one shows you. The words make suggestions. Your brain paints the pictures.

Meg Rosoff

#64. You know, when you get to the New World and you develop your three branches of government and you have a civil society, you can just jettison all the barbarism I recommended in the first books.

Sam Harris

#65. Sending a book out into the world is a lot like sending your child to the first day of kindergarten. You hope the other kids play nice and that she makes friends.

Mitchell Zuckoff

#66. Narrators can make or break your audiobook experience. Make sure your read first. always remember who's voice you can stand and try to stick to these people other wise your will end up hating the book. 50shades worst narrator ever. wined the whole book. enjoyed it much more in my head

Anonymous

#67. "Keep your hands to yourself!" might almost be put at the head of the first chapter of every book on etiquette.

Emily Post

#68. If absence makes the heart grow fonder, then DO NOT be afraid to LEAVE someone who is messing with YOUR MOOD in a detrimental way.

Shay Dawkins

#69. You get up and, first thing in the morning, you do your 500 words. Do it every day and you've got a book in eight or nine months.

Vaclav Smil

#70. If you want to see and feel magic first hand, read a book to your kid before bedtime. - Richard Due

Richard Due

#71. You never forget the books you loved as a kid. You never forget the poems you memorized, the first book you read until the cover fell off, the book you read hidden from your mother. What an honor to hold hands with a child's imagination in this way.

Meg Medina

#72. I think that the economics of book publishing favor hits with long book runs. You make all your money on the last bunch of books, not the first.

Seth Godin

#73. Noam Chomsky has a book, which I read for the first time when I was in Spain, called 'Fear of Democracy'. There is your answer. Fear of democracy. In Honduras, they had a sham democracy. It was run by elites, what was called a liberal democracy, but in reality was a false democracy.

Hugo Chavez

#74. Starting your book is only the first five miles of a twenty-six-mile marathon that's one-third of a triathlon (authoring, publishing, and entrepreneuring).

Guy Kawasaki

#75. Tell you what, why don't you think of whoever wrote your first good book? I'm talking about the one that got under you like a magic carpet and lifted you right off the ground. Do you know what I'm talking about? They know. It's on every face that faces his.

Stephen King

#76. The opening lines of a book are so important. You really need to somehow charm your reader. If you can't get her attention in the first pages, you may have lost her. There has to be an ambience.

Tatiana De Rosnay

#77. A book is like a pump. It gives nothing unless first you give to it. You prime a pump with your own water, you work the handle with your own strength. You do this because you expect to get back more than you give.

Stephen King

#78. The best thing I ever learned when I first started acting is that you audition, and then you forget about it when you walk out the door. Even when you have a callback, you can't bank on things until you actually book that job, or your heart will just be broken over and over again.

Allison Tolman

#79. One day I gave Clifford a bath. And I combed his hair and took hom to the dog show. I'd like to say Clifford won first prize ... but he didn't. I don't care. You can keep all your small dogs. You can keep all your black, white, brown, and spotted dogs. I'll keep Clifford ... Wouldn't you?

Norman Bridwell

#80. The goal of this book is do for you what Greg did for me: reframe 26.2 miles as accessible and inspire your first marathon journey, one mile at a time.

Gina Greenlee

#81. We went to a Barnes and Noble, where I picked up an unauthorized
biography of M.C. Hammer, and not wanting to overload her on her first
book, I steered Dumb Dumb toward a Choose Your Own Adventure.

Chelsea Handler

#82. Medicine is learned by the bedside and not in the classroom. Let not your conceptions of disease come from words heard in the lecture room or read from the book. See, and then reason and compare and control. But see first.

William Osler