Manuscript Quotes

Childhood memories surge back more vividly midway through life – like some palimpsest whose original text suddenly reappears after the manuscript has been chemically treated.

There is no loss bigger than losing your manuscript, not even love.

May the new era be an era of liberty and respect for everyone--including writers! Only through liberty and respect for culture can Europe be saved from the cruel days of which Montesquieu spoke in the Esprit des lois: "Thus, in the days of fables, after the floods and deluges, there came forth from the soil armed men who exterminated each other." Boook XXXII, Chapter XXIII.

Manuscripts - at least for Muslims who understand the subject - are to be read as books whose contents are to be known and understood, for that is why they were written, and not to be regarded as enigmatic specimens for critical textual and philological exercises. To them what is in the manuscripts is more important than what is on them, and so they say: Al-'ilmu fi'l-sudur la fi'l-sutur.

When you write a manuscript, it feels like being in a relationship with someone. You'll hate it, get bored with it, be pissed of, like you just want to break up. But, just like any relationship, you will fall in love again and again, like you don't want to lose it.

How do you end a story that’s not yours? Add another sentence where there is a pause? Infiltrate the story with a comma when really there should have been a period? Punctuate with an exclamation point where a period would have sufficed? What if you kill something breathing and breathe life into something the author wanted to eliminate? How do you get inside the mind of a person who isn’t there? Fill the shoes of someone who will never again fill his own?

When you print out your manuscript and read it, marking up with a pen, it sometimes feels like a criminal returning to the scene of a crime.

It can be depressing when no one takes interest, and a lack of response makes the writer question why they’re writing at all. To have one’s writing rejected is like you, yourself, are being rejected.

It is difficult for me to commit to an manuscript. Once, I get finished writing it. I get this feeling of adrenaline, and satisfaction. This is when the amusement begins, for the writer's side of me.

The pain of an unpublished manuscript is akin to the trauma of bearing an unborn.

Turning a manuscript into a book is easy getting the manuscript ready to become a book is hard.