Literary Compensation Quotes

The want of an international Copy-Right Law, by rendering it nearly impossible to obtain anything from the booksellers in the wayof remuneration for literary labor, has had the effect of forcing many of our very best writers into the service of the Magazines and Reviews.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

In the novel we can know people perfectly, and, apart from the general pleasure of reading, we can find here a compensation for their dimness in life.

A misconception that exists in the eyes of the general reading population is that authors make truckloads of money.

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.

The writer who can't do his job looks to his editor to do it for him, though he won't dream of sharing his royalties with that editor.

I got $30 from Nation magazine for a poem and $500 for my first book of poems.

A publisher many years ago asked if I'd like to write a novel for £50. And I said, 'Absolutely.'

Any writer worth his salt knows that only a small proportion of literature does nore than partly compensate people for the damage they have suffered in learning to read.

Who will want to write if writing doesn't pay?

Poets, we know, are terribly sensitive people, and in my observation one of the things they are most sensitive about is money.

Is there not some place within your gift where I can earn a decent support for myself, my wife, and child? I have not heard of a single author, not even a small one like myself, who has been placed under obligation to the Republican party. And yet I think the Republican party is under some obligation to us authors.

My writing, I am prepared to think, may be a substitute for something I have been born without - a so-called normal relation to society. My books are my relation to society.