Published Quotes

In February of this year I returned to China to research my next book. The authorities know about the novels of mine that have been published in the west, including the latest one, Beijing Coma, about a student shot in Tiananmen Square, but so far have allowed me to return.

Many aspects of the writing life have changed since I published my first book, in the 1960s. It is more corporate, more driven by profits and marketing, and generally less congenial - but my day is the same: get out of bed, procrastinate, sit down at my desk, try to write something.

For a writer, published works are like fallen flowers, but the expected new work is like a calyx waiting to blossom.

Every book has mistakes in them, every one. There's never been a book published without mistakes.

I tend to turn down books originally published as e-books. As for selling books directly to e-book publishers, I would do so only if all traditional publishers had turned them down.

I had been a student in Vienna, and one of the neat little things I had found out was about that zoo. It was a good debut novel for me to have published. I was 26 or 27 when it was published. I already had a kid and would soon have a second.

An actor remembers his first piece of published praise. It is written on his heart.

I hope to read a Harry Potter novel soon, to see what it's all about. I admit to being annoyed that many good light fantasy writers have had trouble getting published, in England and elsewhere, when it is obvious the readers were waiting for us all along.

We used to get published a lot. And there was this vodka advertisement... it embarrassed me a lot afterwards.

It would take a lifetime to read all the webcomics published in one year.

Between 1910 and 1950 approximately 350 lives of Jesus were published in the English language alone.

I am a writer and always was; being a writer is an integral part of my identity. Being published, being well regarded, is a component of that identity.

I felt that I had to write. Even if I had never been published, I knew that I would go on writing, enjoying it and experiencing the challenge.

With .NET once an API is published it's available to all programming languages at the same time.

Even if I knew for certain that I would never have anything published again, and would never make another cent from it, I would still keep on writing.

The Spice Girl Victoria Beckham has just published the story of her life. I confess that it is not in my reading table.

I wrote speculative fiction because I loved to read it, and thought I could do better than some of the people who were getting published.

If you want to write, write it. That's the first rule. And send it in, and send it in to someone who can publish it or get it published. Don't send it to me. Don't show it to your spouse, or your significant other, or your parents, or somebody. They're not going to publish it.

I submitted manuscripts to publishers. This was not so much a feeling that I should be published as a wish to escape the feared and hated drudgery of normal work.

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

Live never to be ashamed if anything you say or do is published around the world, even if what is said is not true.

Of the first seven novels I wrote, numbers four and five were published. Numbers one, two, three, six, and seven, have never seen the light of day... and rightly so.

I wrote some bad poetry that I published in North African journals, but even as I withdrew into this reading, I also led the life of a kind of young hooligan.

It's an awful feeling to write something that you feel is really important... and to feel that you're being published by people who really don't get it and/or don't really care.

An English journalist called Michael Viney told me when I was 25, that I would write well if I cared a lot what I was writing about. That worked. I went home that day and wrote about parents not understanding their children as well as we teachers did, and it was published the very next week.

My favorite book is the last one printed, which is always better than those that were published earlier.

I could give you some names of Workshop participants who are as good as many who are being published but haven't had the right editor recognize their merit or have not been adequately published.

I think I got spoiled and that writing a short story and getting it published, or writing a novel and getting it published, you pretty much get to do the first, second and third draft yourself without a whole lot of interference.

Democrats were simply hoping to win some political points by getting their outlandish rhetoric published in the newspapers and heard on the talk shows.

I have two books that were published quite some time ago. I start to read about three sentences. I have to close it. I am so self-conscious. Who did I think I was?