Maxwell Perkins Quotes

Anybody can find out if he is a writer. If he were a writer when he tried to write of some particular day he would find in the effort that he could recall exactly how the light fell and how the temperature felt and all the quality of it. Most people cannot do it. If they can do it they may never be successful in a pecuniary sense but that ability is at the bottom of writing I am sure.

I believe the writer... should always be the final judge. I have always held to that position and have sometimes seen books hurt thereby but at least as often helped. The book belongs to the author.

You have to throw yourself away when you write.

Every good thing that comes is accompanied by trouble.

Just get it down on paper, and then we’ll see what to do with it.

I think the novel is a wonder....it has vitality to an extraordinary degree, and glamour, and a great deal of underlying thought of unusual quality....And as for the sheer writing, it's astonishing. [About The Great Gatsby]

The amount of meaning you get into a sentence, the dimensions and intensity of the impression you make a paragraph carry, are most extraordinary.... You once told me you were not a natural writer—my God! You have plainly mastered the craft, of course; but you needed far more than craftsmanship for this. [about The Great Gatsby]

Whenever any of these new writers come up who are brilliant, I always realize that you have more talent and more skill than any of them;---but circumstances have prevented you from realizing upon the fact for a long time. [About F. Scott Fitzgerald]