Rachel Gibson Quotes

I've had a lot of books rejected in my time. My first novel, which didn't get published, was, with hindsight, crashingly dull.

'A Wrinkle in Time' was almost never published. You can't name a major publisher who didn't reject it.

I spent four of my five years at Stanford writing a novel I was unable to sell.

Nobody told me how hard it was going to be to get published. I wrote four novels that nobody wanted, sent them out all over, collected hundreds and hundreds of rejection slips.

I didn't expect any success at all. I was rejected by every publisher in the world and every agent in town.

For over a year I continued to submit mss, and have them rejected - the last few with rejection letters indicated the story was pretty good, but I was American.

My first four books were not published because nobody wanted them. They were adult books, not kids' books.

Not being published would be great. When I say that to other writers they look at me as if I'm totally insane.

I thought that I would have a huge literary novel coming out when I was, like, 29. I quit my banking job, and I was halfway through my second novel - and I will never publish it, because it's very mediocre.

It's still incredibly hard. Not just honing my craft but kicking down doors, getting my work published. Early on, I could have wallpapered my house with all the rejection letters sent my way. I put thousands of hours and pages into four novels that never saw the light of day.

The Dancing Girls of Lahore was offered to dozens of British publishers and was turned down by everyone. It is still on offer in the U.K., but I'm not confident there will be any takers.

I wrote one terrible manuscript after another for a decade and I guess they gradually got a little less terrible. But there were many, many unpublished short stories, abandoned screenplays and novels... a Library of Congress worth of awful literature.

By no means did my first book sell. I took a few runs at it. You'll never see those early efforts 'cause they're burned, straight to the fireplace where they belong.

My first short story sale was to a magazine that sat on the story forever... and never did publish it.

...the vital point to remember is that the swine who just sent your pearl of a story back with nothing but a coffee-stain and a printed rejection slip can be wrong. You cannot take it for granted that he is wrong, but you have an all-important margin of hope that might be enough to keep you going.

I have SO many books I didn't sell. Some my agent rejected outright, others made it all the way to my editor to be turned away. Not everything is a winner, which is tough when you've devoted eight or nine months of your life to something.

I wrote short stories for seven years and used to mail them out. You couldn't send them by e-mail. I called them manila boomerangs. I'd seal the self-addressed stamped envelope inside an envelope and I'd mail it off, and it would come back six weeks later with a rejection letter in it.

I was rejected for many-many films.

I would have loved to have had a farewell match, and would have wanted the DFB to make that offer. But certain people did not plan that for me. I have to accept that.

In Hollywood, normally things don't work out, and dreams are crushed.

I live in reality, and I know at any moment I could stop getting the phone calls and nobody wants to hear me sing or tell jokes anymore.

That was the lowest point in my entire life: The shellshock of not being in the NBA. All my peers are playing and I'm not because of boneheaded mistakes.

I got rejected from all the good drama schools first time.

The first eight years in Mumbai were specially tough. I knew during the first two months of my stay that there's no point waiting for hours to meet producers. They won't meet you and definitely won't give you a role.

In brief, we who write are all in the same boat, as if we are survivors of torpedoes, and we hope to reach the shores of thought with strength for more activity.