Min Jin Lee Quotes

A whole bunch of agents and editors looked at my stories, and they all said, in effect, 'You're a pretty good writer and you should probably get these published; when you grow up and write a novel, get in touch.'

I had a very realistic expectation of the level of success that it was possible to attain writing romance novels.

Never, ever become a writer. It's a nightmare.

For a lot of people, becoming an author is a change in occupation... they are coming from something that totally has nothing to do with this. If they are expecting to come into a room full of people praising them, then they are in the wrong place.

No one wants a masterpiece knocking around when your own book is looking for attention.

Writing is a intensely personal activity. I can pen down my best thoughts when I'm alone. But when one is elevated into the stature of an author, you have to think about your books in terms of their business angle.

If you're going to write a book that might, in its very best accidental career, sell 30,000 copies, you've got to have a day job.

When people talk about being a writer, the first words that come to mind are glamour and artistic parties like Charles Dickens used to mix cocktails for.

One of the things you want as a successful writer is the anonymity.

I'm not sure if you can strive your way into a career as a novelist. You have to write books; there are no short cuts.

I know very well that one cannot become an author by just writing a book.

If you are a young writer today, it's very hard.

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

How lucky am I? Quite often I speak at book festivals, and people ask me how I got published. There's people who have been working on a book for as long as ten years, and I feel like such a cow.

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.

Once I decided to write, to be published, I knew it would happen.

To write what is worth publishing, to find honest people to publish it, and get sensible people to read it, are the three great difficulties in being an author.

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.

I finished my first novel - it was around 300 pages long - when I was 16. Wrote one more before I got out of high school, then wrote the first Lincoln Perry novel when I was 19. It didn't sell, but I liked the character and I knew the world so I tried what was, in my mind, a sequel. Wrote that when I was 20, and that one made it.

There are three difficulties in authorship: to write anything worth publishing, to find honest men to publish it, and to find sensible men to read it.

It is indeed difficult to make a living as a writer, and my advice to anyone contemplating a literary career is to have some other trade.

The novel is just fine: It's novelists who aren't doing so well.

I could write an entertaining novel about rejection slips, but I fear it would be overly long.

I realized early on that being an author is a hugely misunderstood job. Because there are no pay grades and very little structure, people make interesting assumptions about the profession.

It's taken me 15 years to feel I might be able to write and publish short stories, and for the assiduous checks of the industry to allow some through.