A Quote by Arthur Quiller-Couch

If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: 'Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it - whole-heartedly - and delete it before sending your manuscript to press.'

Arthur Quiller-Couch

Quote Topics

Before Delete Feel Fine Impulse Manuscript Me Obey Piece Practical Present Press Require Rule Sending Whenever Whole Will Writing Your

Quote Author

Arthur Quiller-Couch
English - Novelist
November 21, 1863 - May 12, 1944

Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it - whole-heartedly - and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

Arthur Quiller-Couch

Don't wait for success, but for the respect and interest of those who read you. At the start it could be a classmate, someone who shares your interests. Before sending off the manuscript for a novel to a publishing house, it would be a good idea to try writing short stories, and publishing them in a local magazine.

Dacia Maraini

A basic rule of life for reporters is that you should spend your time talking with and learning about people who are not sending you press releases, rather than those who are.

James Fallows

10 Rules for Being Human: Rule #1 - You will receive a body. Rule #2 - You will be presented with lessons. Rule #3 - There are no mistakes, only lessons. Rule #4 - The lesson is repeated until learned. Rule #5 - Learning does not end. Rule #6 - "There" is no better than "here". Rule #7 - Others are only mirrors of you. Rule #8 - What you make of your life is up to you. Rule #9 - Your answers lie inside of you. Rule #10 - You will forget all this at birth.

Cherie Carter-Scott

All writing seems to me worse in the state of proof than in any other form. In manuscript one's own wisdom is rather remarkable to one, but in proof it has the effect of one's private furniture repeated in the shop windows. And then there is the sense that the worst errors will go to press unnoticed!

George Eliot

One of my graduate school professors, to whom I started sending poems when I started writing again after a 10-year hiatus, suggested I prepare a book manuscript which he could send to publishers for me.

Marilyn Nelson

Start by writing down ten positive words to describe yourself. Write them on a card - the size of a business card will do - and bring it out whenever you feel insecure or your self-esteem is running low. Bring it out before you walk into a big party or go to an important meeting. It will help you, believe me. Carry it everywhere.

Noel Edmonds

Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Mark Twain

Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Mark Twain

Dieting is odious and can require years of determination and sacrifice. I entirely understand the impulse to say, 'Screw it,' and have another piece of cake.

Lionel Shriver

Here's the acid test for appropriateness: Pretend that someone near and dear to you is witnessing what you are writing or sending, or knows what you are thinking about sending. If, say, your partner saw this behavior, how would he or she feel? That you are asking yourself this question could mean that you shouldn't be doing it!

Drew Pinsky

Ignore fact and reason, live entirely in the world of your own fantastic and myth-producing passions; do this whole-heartedly and with conviction, and you will become one of the prophets of your age.

Bertrand Russell

I often get attacked in Saudi Arabia, but the critics don't ridicule my ideas. There were about 30 or 40 articles attacking me in the Saudi press. Not a single one debated something I wrote. They just ridiculed me as a person. They see me as a traitor who is writing in the foreign press. But discuss what I am writing? They will not.

Jamal Khashoggi

What I know is you can't go back. You can't press delete and re-key your life.

Julie Anne Peters

Always respond to every impulse to pray. The impulse to pray may come when you are reading or when you are battling with a text. I would make an absolute law of this: always obey such an impulse.