Manuscript Quotes

“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. ”
― Lizz Clements, Apollo Weeps

“Here’s her story, a tale of the bear-keeper’s daughter and the Empire: what happened to her and what happened because of her.”
― Carol Strickland, The Eagle and the Swan

“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?”
― Shaila Abdullah

“She was no one, a girl who had lucked ito a gift, who had done nothing to earn it. she was his queen”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ninth House

“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.”
― Alvi Syahrin

“manuscript
meanuscript
moanuscript
manurescript
and so on”
― Katerina Stoykova Klemer

“Childhood memories surge back more vividly midway through life – like some palimpsest whose original text suddenly reappears after the manuscript has been chemically treated.”
― Gérard de Nerval, Selected Writings

“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.”
― Don Roff

“KA: What is your basic process working with a writer?

LB: I read a manuscript very quickly first, then I sit down the second time and start reading very carefully and do the detail work, the minute hammering on every page. At this point, I know where the story goes so I’m looking for holes. I’m looking for anything that doesn’t add up. The best way to edit is to live entirely in the world as much as you can. Before I had a child I would edit ten hours on Friday ten hours on Saturday and ten hours on Sunday (obviously I had no hobbies or any nee to go outdoors). You knew everything about the book. You were in tune with every character. You have the voice in your head. Then the author gets a hugely marked up manuscript with all these little scribbles. I’m asking them every question that occurs to me. I give them as much time as they want to sit and digest it. Again, this is one of the reasons I like working far in advance. I have time with the manuscript and they have time with the manuscript. I’m happy to let them work in peace and quiet.

Then we go back and forth as long as is helpful to them. They do the revision and it lands on my desk again. I read it again beginning to end. I assume it doesn’t need a line edit at that point, although I tend to read with a pencil in my hand. There could be one big thing still sticking in your craw that didn’t get fixed, so you just roll up your sleeves…”
― Lee Boudreaux

“There is no loss bigger than losing your manuscript, not even love.”
― Himanshu Chhabra

“What Printing-presses yield we think good store,
But what is writ by hand we reverence more:
A Book that with this printing-blood is dyed
On shelves for dust and moth is set aside,
But if’t be penned it wins a sacred grace
And with the ancient Fathers takes its place.”
― John Donne

“An unedited manuscript is a first draft of story; but is not a finished product. Too many writers study the craft of writing but do not acquire the skills of an editor.”
― Michael J. Kannengieser, The Daddy Rock

“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.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Comments on the Re-Examination of Al-Raniri's Hujjatu'l-Siddiq: A Refutation

“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.”
― Mary Sage Nguyen

“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.”
― Curzio Malaparte, Kaputt

“The pain of an unpublished manuscript is akin to the trauma of bearing an unborn.”
― Anurag Shourie, An Ode Towards Hope –

“Ben ducked beneath the arbor and paused by the fishpond when a memory crept upon him like a shadow. This was the spot where Alice had first read to him from her manuscript. He could still hear her voice, as if it had somehow been captured by the leaves around them and was being played back now, just for him, like a gramophone recording.
"I've had a brilliant idea," he heard her say, so young and innocent, so full of joy. "I've been working on it all morning and I don't like to boast, but I'm quite sure it's going to be my best yet."
"Is it?" Ben had said with a smile. He'd been teasing, but Alice had been far too excited to notice. She'd leapt on with telling him about her idea, the plot, the characters, the twist, and the intensity of her focus- her passion- changed her face completely, bringing an animated beauty to her features. He hadn't noticed she was beautiful until she spoke to him of her stories. Her cheeks flushed and her eyes shone with intelligence. And she was 'very' clever. It took a certain kind of clever to figure out a puzzle- to look ahead and see through all the possible scenarios, to be so strategic. Ben didn't have that kind of brain.
In the beginning he'd simply enjoyed her enthusiasm, the indulgence of being told a story while he worked, the chance to bat ideas back and forth, which was so much like play. She made him feel young, he supposed; her youthful preoccupation with her work, with the very moment they were in, was intoxicating. It made his adult worries disappear.”
― Kate Morton, The Lake House

“It was a lavishly decorated medieval manuscript or something that looked like one. The first letters caught the light from the hallway and sparkled in gold. Strange birds and exotic animals hidden in a tangle of foliage and fairy-tale landscapes lined the borders.”
― Lynne Ewing, The Secret Scroll

“Between life and lie, only one letter defers, the f from feelings" - a quote from her book I'm writing on as FlorenceD”
― Florence Dambricourt

“For every species of book person, the idea of Shakespeare’s library—his personal collection of manuscripts, books, letters and other papers—is enticing, totemic, a subject of wonder. How did he write? Who inspired him? Who appalled him? To know Shakespeare’s books is to know Shakespeare the author.”
― Stuart Kells, Shakespeare's Library: Unlocking the Greatest Mystery in Literature

“If Shakespeare was another Barrington—just an allonymous brand, just a gormless frontman—then there had to be a Machiavelli in the background—a cunning architect of an elaborate bibliographical hoax. How could such a thing be done? And what kind of person could pull it off?”
― Stuart Kells, Shakespeare's Library: Unlocking the Greatest Mystery in Literature

“Our life is an unfinished manuscript; we constantly edit our evolving composition.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Had he read about Lord Lucifer? Did he know the man was him? Had he read the sinful thoughts Miss Hamilton had about him? Violet had written them too honestly and explicitly for publication. She had intended to go back and edit out some of the more wicked lines. They had been little more than girlish fantasies she had set to paper. Those lines came out to torment her now.
He was depravity and his name was Lord Lucifer, the dark angel himself come to earth to tempt innocents. Rose had never so wanted to be debauched as when he gazed upon her.
And this one: She stared at his mouth, the sensual lips and pink tongue licking at the drop of honey, and she longed to feel him licking at her.
Oh, dear God! Neither of those were ever meant to see the light of day. She had written the last one in a heated moment after coming home from a ball where he had eaten a honey-drenched fig.”
― Harper St. George, The Devil and the Heiress

“We should celebrate. And then we'll celebrate again when your second manuscript is finished."
She shook her head again. "Then we should have a double celebration tonight. I already finished it."
"You did?"
"It's all I could think of these past months. Lord Lucifer and his annoying brooding. He wouldn't leave me alone."
She giggled when he tackled her to the bed, rising over her. "I'm glad he tormented you as you tormented me.”
― Harper St. George, The Devil and the Heiress

“I want to write a story! That is what I said for years as I struggled. Everything changed once I learned how to structure a story. I finished the manuscript and was accepted by the first publisher I submitted to.”
― Thomas Funicello, Core Reality Volume 5 Control Subject

“The manuscript seemed to shout less now; it was less stridently flag-wavingly English. As Stella had reinstated the Spanish oranges, the Dutch salad gardens and the Jewish fried fish, the accent of the text had changed. Instead of a clipped BBC English, it now spoke with a hotchpotch voice. Stella felt it more authentic for that, though, and her confidence in it began to return. It might no longer have a lion's roar, but this was a story of a trading and a hospitable nation, turned outward, not inward.”
― Caroline Scott, Good Taste

“1249 A.D.

The Keeper pulled the illuminated manuscript from its hiding place and spread it on the stone hearth. The golden border caught the fire's light, and its reflection looked like an eye flashing open. At once the illusion vanished, but something else caught the Keeper's attention, and the shock of it took his breath away. Within the enlarged first letter, the miniature of the goddess unlocking the jaws of hell had changed; her beauty was gone, replaced by the cruel gaze of a Follower. Was this another change the Scroll had wrought upon itself, or had someone tampered with its magic again?
The Keeper dipped his paintbrush in brown pigment and began drawing a tree on the parchment, curving its limbs over and around the calligraphy until the words were hidden in a maze of twisting branches. For centuries he had devoted himself to uncovering this forbidden knowledge, and now he had assumed the duty of protecting it. He wished he could follow the Path, but the Prophecy was clear; only the child of a fallen goddess and an evil spirit could follow the steps without fear of the Scroll's curse.
Many had died trying to use its magic, but that wasn't the reason the Keeper now kept it hidden, denying its existence. A dangerous transformation had taken place. The Scroll had somehow come to life, as if the words written on the parchment had infused it with an instinct for survival. He could feel it now, alert and suspicious beneath his fingers.
When it was no longer watching him, he dropped his brush, grabbed a reed pin, dipped it into the glutinous black ink, and wrote one final instruction on the last page. His deception awakened whatever lived within the manuscript. Intense light shot through him with deadly force, binding his existence to that of the Secret Scroll for all time.”
― Lynne Ewing, The Prophecy

“My first encounter with the bittersweet taste of the Moro, a Sicilian blood orange, was sitting outside under a gnarled olive tree, during the height of a June heat wave. Small puffs of cloud the only blemish in the otherwise perfect blue sky, the bloodred flesh yielding a juice so refreshing it felt as close to perfect as I've ever come. The second encounter came at a fish market in Catania, where a group of men in flat caps spooned red-orange mounds of Moro granita into their mouths between games of cards. I was back in my dad's world, and the memories of oranges were everywhere.”
― Lizzy Dent, Just One Taste

“Sicily--- Oranges, pistachios, and/or aubergine. Sicilian food a product of immense, diverse history. Have sardines! Try the orange cake. You'll find it all over, but there used to be a good one in Taormina.

I shake my head in amazement. Somehow, it feels like Dad had been quietly guiding me.

Tuscany--- Wild boar is good but tomatoes are better. Nothing else! Please say something with Chiara's tomatoes. I want to help her. Farm is a century old and sells some obscure varieties. Tomato salads, tomato bread soup, panzanella.

And here too, Leo and I had organically found the path my father laid out for us. The notes on Liguria are less specific, but when I read his scrawled handwriting, I smile to myself.

Liguria--- Was thinking about beans, but basil a good opinion.

Oh boy, I cannot wait to show that note to Leo. Basil a good option!
Leo.
I sit and write with an open heart, not shying away from treacly memories of cut oranges shared in the sea. Pushing my cynicism to the side and allowing the love I have for food, for Italy, for my father, to run from my heart down my veins to my fingers and onto the page.”
― Lizzy Dent, Just One Taste

“Joyce kept notebooks and large sheets of paper crammed with character descriptions, lists of rhetorical devices, notes on mathematics, facts about ancient Greece and Homer's Odyssey. Sometimes the notes were arranged by chapter or subject: "Names and Places," "Gulls," "Theosophy," "Blind" and "Recipes." He wrote down phrases and single words, seemingly at random—"tainted curds," "heaventree," "knight of the razor," "boiled shirt," "toro"—and collected them in notebooks, where they waited to be inserted into his manuscript like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.”
― Kevin Birmingham, The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses