Christian Nestell Bovee Quotes

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

I wrote 'Time Stops at Shamli' in 1956, shortly after 'The Room on the Roof' was published, and I couldn't find anyone to publish it.

As a writer you know you don't have to deal with a lot of the crap that most people deal with, the political things. Every couple of years when your book comes out then you have to go into these fights with the publisher and the publicist and that's it.

Writing a book is hard. It turns out, writing a second book is twice as hard.

Out of all artists, authors are the least trained for the spotlight. Wanting attention isn't a requisite part of the package.

I struggled for a long time to get anything published.

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.

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.

Authors by the hundreds can tell you stories by the thousands of those rejection slips before they found a publisher who was willing to 'gamble' on an unknown.

I had a very high-grade publisher tell me I was incapable of writing a memoir.

I have been rejected 120 times, probably because I didn't write the right book.

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

It's not easy making a living as a writer, and for many years I worked at a Waterstones in Dublin. It was a good environment for an aspiring writer, with lots of events and authors appearing.

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 don't get on with novelists, don't enjoy their company. Once you've worked for a publisher, you understand the species, see them in their natural habitat, and it's not always pretty.

There was a part of me that always wanted to be an editor.

Writing offers fairly large rewards to a few successful people, but the rewards come late, and most writers are failures.

I certainly wake up every morning and thank God that I'm not a novelist because the theater is tough, but novel writing is infinitely harder. Especially with the economics of serious fiction being what they are in America.

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

The only people who can be excused for letting a bad book loose on the world are the poor devils who have to write for a living.

Teaching has ruined more American novelists than drink.

He was such a bad writer, they revoked his poetic license.

I always wanted to be a fiction writer, but I couldn't figure out how you could be a novelist and make any money, which continues to be a problem for novelists the world over.

Writing itself is a bad enough trade, rightly held up to ridicule and contempt by the greater part of mankind, and especially by those who do real work, plowing, riding, sailing

But anyone can write, right?'" Conner asked. "I mean, that's why authors get judged so harshly, isn't it? Because technically everyone could do it if they wanted to." "Just because anyone can do something doesn't mean everyone should," Mrs. Peters said. "Besides, anyone with an Internet connection feels they have the credentials to critique or belittle anything these days.