Quotes by Editors - Page 32

I think that writing should be honest and simple, and it should say something about what it means to be a person. When God is good to us, we write in such a way that the act of reading becomes a pleasure to those who buy our books.
M.V. Carey
An author needs a lot more than one person to succumb to his literary seductive charms, but, like Saul, he must realize that he doesn't have to--and indeed cannot--capture the hearts of every possible reader out there. No matter who the writer, his ideal intended audience is only a small faction of all the living readers. Name the most widely read authors you can think of--from Shakespeare, Austen, and Dickens to Robert Waller, Stephen King, and J.K. Rowling--and the immense majority of book-buyers out there actively decline to read them.
Thomas McCormack
Lust is like a robin attacking his reflection in a pane of glass again and again.
Leslie Daniels
Every word I write is another stroke that takes me to the shore of a completed book.
Rob Bignell
I’d like to make it clear from the start that I am gay, gay,gay. Like, when I come out of the closet, I’m usually wearingmy sister’s prom dress kind of gay.
Gwen Hayes
Killing things shouldn't make you happy, Rosa. That's why they're worried.
Justine Larbalestier
A ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel... he must lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men... a good ruler has to learn his world's language... it's different for every world... the language of the rocks and growing things... the language you don't hear just with your ears... the Mystery of Life... not a problem to solve, but a reality to experience... Understanding must move with the flow of the process.
Frank Herbert
You said you were allowed to lose it,' some part of her reminded herself. 'Not yet, not yet.
Holly Black
Democracy is susceptible to being led astray by having scapegoats paraded in front of the electorate. Get the rich, the greedy, the criminals, the stupid leader and so on ad nauseam.
Frank Herbert
I survive at the edge of friends circles.
Holly Black
There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book. (…)A good novel editor is invisible.
Terri Windling
The river is now. This moment. This breath between us. The space between your heartbeats. The moment before you blink. The instant a thought flashes through your mind. It is everything that is around us. Life. Energy. Flowing, endlessly flowing, carrying you from then...to now...to tomorrow. Listen: you can hear the music of it. Of the passage of time.
Lisa Mangum
This is what I always said to André: you never know. You never know what the future may bring. I just knew that whatever time we had together, whether one year or thirty-four, I wanted it. I wanted him. Regardless of the consequences. When a love like that comes your way, you grab, hold, cherish it – you live it. You don’t allow it to pass by. It is rare and precious. If you are lucky, you’ll have it once in a lifetime. Will I be allowed to live it twice? I doubt it, even if I wish it were possible. Periodically, I sit quietly and stare into space and understand that I am only forty, and it is behind me.
Karina Szczurek
it is not the first language that is all-important, but which language captures the adolescent's imagination when he or she first discovers literature.
Ned Thomas
I sometimes wonder whether our churches--living as we do in American death-denying culture, relentlessly smiling through our praise choruses--are inadvertently helping people live not as much in hope as in denial.
Mark Galli
The bloody times, the horror, will just be history to them, words on a page, so how will they dare to judge? Very easily, I should imagine.
Storm Constantine
Dune was a world of paradox now—a world under siege, yet the center of power. To come under siege, he decided, was the inevitable fate of power.
Frank Herbert
Man, to Lewis, is an immortal subject; pains are his moral remedies, salutary disciplines, willing sacrifices, playing their part in a drama of interchange between God and him.
Jocelyn Gibb
Dangers lurk in all systems. Systems incorporate the unexamined beliefs of their creators. Adopt a system, accept its beliefs, and you help strengthen the resistance to change
Frank Herbert
In our not-yet-acknowledged secret garden lie the seeds of some of our best not-yet-written stories
Sol Stein
This is one of the difficulties and pleasures of studying the Inklings; Christians all, they offer, along with the expected 20th-century psychological explanations for behavior, unexpected spiritual ones.
Philip Zaleski
Traveling together into what the poet Adrienne Rich has called ‘the cratered night of female memory,’ they undertook a shared process of self-discovery, working together to probe the possibility of woman’s creative power. Through their exploration of hermetic and magical paths, they developed a common pictorial language, derived from the realms of domestic life, the fairy tale and the dream.
Janet Kaplan
But ask us to prove even to ourselves we are right in our belief, and we are in a quandary.
J.W. Sire
A modest man is usually admired - if people ever hear of him.
Edgar Watson Howe
Pray devoutly but hammer stoutly.
Sir William Gurney Benham
Women had cup sizes to track their development. Men had a ruler and hope.
Christopher Bollen
Create or arouse such unbridled forces and you built carnal fantasies of enormous complexity. You could lead whole populations around by their desires, by their fantasy projections.
Frank Herbert
And when you are criticized, as you will be, remind your critics that you have the right to speak your mind. And if they shout you down, as they probably will, then inform them that since they insist on being asses, you will henceforth communicate with them with the appropriate part of your own anatomy. And turning to face them from the posterior, let them know where you stand. Let every fart count as a peal of thunder for liberty. Let every fart remind the nation of how much it has let pass out of its control. It is a small gesture, but one that can be very effective - especially in a large crowd. So fart, and if you must, fart often. But always fart without apology. Fart for freedom, fart for liberty - and fart proudly
Carl Japikse
So it is with the mind, Nandini. Allow it to be in balance. Avoid extremes: the middle way is better. Neither force the mind too hard into concentration nor let it wander aimlessly. Meditation is to pay attention, to be aware of your breathing, your posture, your feelings, your perceptions, your thoughts, and all that passes through your mind and the mind itself; whatever is going on within you and between you and the universe. Meditation is not just sitting for an hour here or an hour there; meditation is a way of life. It is practiced all the time. There is no separation between meditation and everyday living. When you have ceased to be bound by the past or by the future, when you are fully present in the here and now, then it is meditation.
Satish Kumar
I knew that change was coming, the way you know things you can't see, by feeling them; by instinct. The way the bees know everything they know.
Kathe Koja
I could not take one more minute of trying to convince the people of Los Angeles that a workers’ revolution and a complete overhaul of society was a tiny bit more exciting than getting a bit role in a Burger King commercial
Susie Bright
Momma was with the pony last night. Lily and me have him in the mornings, and we give him a wash with the shammy cloths and a soapy bucket so he's ready for Jade to look after him the next night. I think Momma must ride him too rough because he's always sweating and white-eyed when we get him, pulling tight at his rope and spreading his wide beige lips. He won't settle forever and ever, he just turns circles around the stake. Me and Lily get nervy watching him paw scoops out of the backyard soil.
Kirsty Logan
Just try it,� he murmurs, reaching over to cover my hand gently.And I think, Whoa, that’s never happened before!Then: Is he just doing that because he thinks Wyatt is interested?And, finally, this: Who the hell cares?!
Rusty Fischer
Wolves are social. They need their pack.
Justine Larbalestier
Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.
Frank Herbert
The invisibility factor of women in this industry is not unlike the invisibility of girl geeks. We know we exist, but everyone else seems to think we’re an enigma every time they get the notion to write about us and what we apparently want. What we want isn’t any different than what anyone wants. Good stories. With characters we can relate to or identify with or that are interesting to read about. And we’d like to feel welcome, not the perpetual other. We don’t want to feel excluded or like props in every narrative. We don’t want or need every story to be about a girl character. But we’d like them to be treated with the same care and attention male characters are. And it is possible, even in male dominated narratives.
Mariah Huehner
Those who seek happiness miss it and those who discuss it lack it.
Holbrook Jackson
He gave her a smile that wasn’t really a smile at all. “Eh, it wouldn’t be so bad. I wouldn’t have to study for the SATs or get a summer job or figure out my major. I can drink Elderflower wine all day, dance all through the night, and sleep on a bower of roses.”Hazel made a face. “I’m pretty sure there are some colleges where you can do that. I bet there are some colleges where you can major in that.
Holly Black
You see, the best thing about wrong decisions is that they don’t prevent you from making the right decisions later on. It’s harder, but it’s not impossible.
Siobhan Vivian
I was worried about sex," he went on. "But you know what, Sulie? It's like being told I can't have any caviar for the next couple years. I don't even like caviar. And when you come right down to it, I don't want sex right now. I supposed you punched that into the computer? 'Cut down sex drive, increase euphoria'? Anyway, it finally penetrated my little brain that I was just making trouble for myself, worrying about whether I could get along without something I really didn't want. It's a reflection of what I think other people think I should want.
Frederik Pohl
He was Control, and he was in control.
Jeff VanderMeer
When most dullards hear the words 'the theater,' they envision a twelve-screen multiplex where disaster porn entertains the culturally witless for 90 minutes at a time. Pfaugh. The word 'theater' has grandeur. Power. Back to its ancient Grecian origins, it means 'the seeing place.' A stage upon which actors and actresses use fiction to show us truths.
Mark Waid
That was the trouble with the supernatural, Vimbai thought--you didn't know what laws ruled it, and what was a coincidence and what was a sign and what was weird and what wasn't. It was like a whodunit, only the clues refused to be arranged into any sort of hierarchy or a straight narrative, and most of the time it wasn't even clear if they indeed were clues; a jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces were blank.
Ekaterina Sedia
We made the choice, right there in our local coffee shop, that we were going to do things differently. We were going to put the story first, no matter where that led us. We’d open ourselves up to all genres, all forms. We’d publish works that stayed with us in an intangible way, long after that last page is turned.
Dani Hedlund
We speak, and write, in one of the most diverse, gloriously ecumenical tongues on the planet. In English, there is a word or phrase for pretty much anything we want to say, and if there isn't, we make it up, and it is welcomed into the family. We can express ourselves as complexly or as simply as we like. We can be magniloquent didacts, or we can talk plain.
Jeff Deck
...love's shadow is jealousy.
Storm Constantine
A shade flickered to my left, an eerie shadow balanced even more precariously on the railing than I. Her plimsolls struggled to grip the same rail my fingers now held. I knew her face, just as I knew her death; I’d watched it often enough, those times I’d been unable to avoid crossing here. Nerys was always here, tied to the moment of her death, an echo, forever hurtling down into those waters, only to reappear an instant later, once more wavering on the rails.
Hazel Butler
A great philosophy is not a philosophy without reproach it is philosophy without fear.
Charles Péguy
Walking out in the middle of a funeral would be, of course, bad form. So attempting to walk out on one's own was beyond the pale.
Steve Hockensmith
Do you think it’s easy for me? No, I don’t remember you. I don’t remember holding you or talking to you or falling in love with you—but I walk around with a giant hole in my heart all the time. I feel your absence every second of the day. It aches and nothing soothes it. Losing you is bad enough, but I don’t even get the comfort of remembering that I had you once.-Haden
Gwen Hayes
They pine for the hip, frosty girlfriend they abandoned for a pleasant if unexciting marriage to her sunnier, less mentally present sister coast.
Sari Botton
Books may not change our suffering, books may not protect us from evil, books may not tell us what is good or what is beautiful, and they will certainly not shield us from the common fate of the grave. But books grant us myriad possibilities: the possibility of change, the possibility of illumination.
Alberto Manguel
It bombarded her with instant pleasure, instant pain and instant arousal, fact and fiction all mixed up and blurred together to create an Image. 
Ruth Harris
She'd always been a little contemptuous of beauty, as though it was something you had to trade away some other vital thing for.
Holly Black
The man who can keep a secret may be wise, but he is not half as wise as the man with no secrets to keep
Edgar Watson Howe
Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is the task of Religion to fit man into this lawfulness.
Frank Herbert
Once upon a time, they say, there was a girl...there was a boy...there was a person who was in trouble. And this is what she did...and what he did...and how they learned to survive it. This is what they did...and why one failed...and why another triumphed in the end. And I know that it's true, because I danced at their wedding and drank their very best wine.
Terri Windling
Is romantic yearning an appetite for [H]eaven, or is it the ultimate refinement of covetousness?
Jocelyn Gibb
My duty, I know, is to lead. I cannot offer an array of options. I must offer a long but narrow path to Salvation, and guide the Saints down it. Were that path wide and varied, it would lead nowhere; and I will then have failed both God and man.
David Ebershoff
It's ridiculous, how people judge talent. Or, rather, don't judge. They just default to what everyone else thinks.
Siobhan Vivian