Marilyn Hacker Quotes

But even gold is not everything: and only a fanatic, and a rather foolish fanatic, would say that this style of fiction summed up and exhausted all the good that fiction could give and do.

There are many more want-to-be writers out there than good editors.

People generally don't recognize how long it takes to conceive, publish, and write a book.

It's easy to get published once you have written a really good book and the hard part, 99 percent of what you need to worry about, is really finishing it.

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.

No one writes a great book every time out, or even a good book.

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.

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

I became a connoisseur of that nasty thud a manuscript makes when it comes through the letter box.

I feel sorry for people who have to edit me. Which is why book writing is by far the most enjoyable. Really the only thing it's based on is whether it's good or not. No book editor, in my experience, is getting a manuscript and try to rewrite it.

I've written 16 children's books and five unpublished novels. Some of the latter were breathtakingly bad.

I had written a book. For various reasons, the publishing industry had decided that my book was going to be 'important.' The novel had taken me 12-and-a-half years to write, and after being with the book for so long, I had no real perspective on the merits or demerits of what I had written. I hoped it was good, but feared that it wasn't.

One of the more interesting things I've learnt since becoming a writer is that if you like the book, you'll generally like the person. It doesn't always work in reverse - there are huge numbers of lovely people out there writing not very good books.

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

A good novel is a good novel, pointe finale. And I think what I'm writing is exactly that.

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 attempt to write a good novel. Whether it is literature or not is something that will be decided by the ages, not by me and not by a pack of critics around the globe.

I wanted to see if I could write a good book.

I always grew up with the idea that in order to be a successful writer, I should have a book published.

I sat down to try to write 'Edinburgh,' an autobiographical novel, and that took five years to write and two years to sell.

I'm not a writer who refuses to talk about a book until I've finished.

I found some time ago that I have to be careful, while working on a novel, what I read.

If writers, like comedians or singers, could only hear themselves bombing as they worked, it's likely that certain books would be cut short after the first few leaden sentences.

I started out as a novelist and wrote several novels before deciding to publish one, and I fully intend to go back to the form.

I'm working with published authors and some very young undergraduates and lots of people in between. They are lovely people, and they can write.