Matthew Quick Quotes

In so many ways, being a literary agent is an irresistible job to me. Not only does it involve all the things I love - being an advocate for others, problem solving, and going to meetings - yes, that's true, I love meetings, though everyone says it's bizarre! - but most importantly, I love working with people whose writing excites me.

Hell hath no fury like a hustler with a literary agent.

I've never seen a worse situation than that of young writers in the United States. The publishing business in North America is so commercialized.

It wasn't until I was 26 or 25 when I started sending work out to magazines.

I stayed at 'Cosmo' well beyond my internship, moving up the ranks over some 15 years to become books editor, then brand director, then editor-at-large - editing everything from an excerpt of Gore Vidal's memoir to writing some of those juicy cover lines myself.

Agents are deal makers, and they're really, really good at making deals. But they're also exceptionally helpful after the deal is made - agents act as a good intermediary between authors and publishers whenever disagreements come up.

I've dealt with Hollywood about having my work made into a film or cartoon but nothing came of it. That's not to say I wouldn't like to see something happen.

The digital revolution has wrest a little control away from corporate publishers and white, male, middle-aged critics, but the financial value put on the job of the writer and the misconceptions around that make it extremely difficult to enter the profession.

I didn't even know for years that people ever even got paid for this, because they don't teach you that in school. They don't say Shakespeare got a check.

I sold my first screenplay six months before 'Glee,' but they had the option for a year and now it's back with me.

I've done work for hire. I've worked for DC and Dark Horse.

If did go back to school, I would want to learn another aspect of the entertainment industry like to become a producer or an agent, you need a law degree.

My generation was maybe the last in which you could set up shop as a writer and hope to make a living at it.

If you look at the publishers I've worked with, generally, they're a great bunch. Creation is unlike any other publishing house you can think of. The people I've worked with have integrity and intelligence and, almost always, less money than ideas.

Those writers that have zero say in their movie adaptations have zero say because they sell it. If you don't sell it, and you do it yourself, and you wait until the screenplay is ready, you don't have to worry about that.

Big Tech's nonchalance about copyright violation tramples over people like my wife and me, who strive to make a living in the great tradition of the creative realm.

I believe that artists should be paid for their creativity. There's no other industry where people can come in and take what you create for free and give it away for free and that's acceptable.

It's a bit of a crapshoot out there with young writers right now anyway.

I would love to see young writers come out of college and know there is a possibility to be a novelist.

It may be that Tolstoy and Virginia Woolf were sitting around fretting about their Amazon reviews or their pre-pub whatever, but I kind of doubt it. I don't think that's how the work probably got made.

The first job I was offered was as an editorial assistant. I think it was the best thing for me, in terms of being a storyteller by nature, to have spent years being an editor because I learned so much from it.

Well I think any author or musician is anxious to have legitimate sales of their products, partly so they're rewarded for their success, partly so they can go on and do new things.

I started writing songs in high school, so you had to write this stuff out and register it with the Library of Congress. You had to learn how to do that stuff.

I don't want to be like those guys that, two or three years into their contract, they do really good, and then they don't care.

My hope is always to be able to find well-written, interesting material with good people and then actually be able to get those jobs.