Top 1200 Rejection Letters Quotes & Sayings

I don't think of rejection as rejection, just a bad fit. Then I seek out other avenues of acceptance.

I like to joke that I probably hold the world record for rejection letters. Yes, the truth is that I was fed up of being rejected repeatedly, and self-publication was an act of defiance at traditional publishing. But life works in strange ways.

Don't get down on yourself when you get rejection letters.

Refuse to let the fear of rejection hold you back. Remember, rejection is never personal.

Like pretty much every short story writer, I submitted to every market under the sun and hoped for the best. The rejection letters I've collected over the years can probably make a book of their own.

O ay, letters - I had letters - I am persecuted with letters - I hate letters - nobody knows how to write letters; and yet one has 'em, one does not know why - they serve one to pin up one's hair.

Rejection-and the fear of rejection-is the biggest impediment we face to choosing ourselves.

I wrote a huge number of letters that spring: one a week to Naoko, several to Reiko, and several more to Midori. I wrote letters in the classroom, I wrote letters at my desk at home with Seagull in my lap, I wrote letters at empty tables during my breaks at the Italian restaurant. It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life.

I know there's a lot of talk about self-publishing right now. Everyone's giddy with the possibilities. And I'll admit that it looks good on paper: sell your books directly and keep a bigger chunk of the profit for yourself. No rejection letters. No hassle with agents. Sounds good, right?

Just coming to L.A. to be a comic and an actor, it's not the kindest world to come to. There's a lot of rejection, which I'm not used to. I hate rejection, but it's about 90 percent of the business.

Coping with rejection is an important skill to learn and understand when navigating the Art World. Rejection and disinterest is the rule, not the exception.

For over a year I continued to submit mss, and have them rejected - the last few with rejection letters indicated the story was pretty good, but I was American.

The letters I get from people, a lot of people are very appreciative. I get stacks of letters. I'll do an event, and all the kids will send me all kinds of letters, and that right there is enough motivation to keep doing it.

I didn't have the best relationship with my dad. I was bullied in school, picked on. I remember the first time of just trying to connect with girls. It was just rejection after rejection. So I always felt ugly.

Letters actually work. Even the top dog himself takes time every day to read 10 letters that are picked out by staff. I can tell you that every official that I've ever worked with will tell you about the letters they get and what they mean.

I think I got serious about writing in the late '90s. The first stuff I wrote was terrible and got rejected, but I started getting more encouraging rejection letters.

People write me letters and say I should answer them. But I don't like to answer letters. I don't write letters. I've never written my mother one.

Rejection is one thing - but rejection from a fool is cruel.

Letters do love one another. However, due to their anatomical differences, some letters have a hard time achieving intimacy.

I took all of my rejection letters - there must have been thousands of them in a huge box - and I went out on the curb and burned them all, crying.

It's still incredibly hard. Not just honing my craft but kicking down doors, getting my work published. Early on, I could have wallpapered my house with all the rejection letters sent my way. I put thousands of hours and pages into four novels that never saw the light of day.

It's a shame publishers send rejection slips. Writers should get something more substantial than a slip that amounts to a pile of confetti. Publishers should send something heavier. Editors should send out rejection bricks, so at the end of a lot of years, you would have something to show besides a wheelbarrow of rejection slips. Instead you could have enough bricks to build a house.

Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil-but there is no way around them.

It is not rejection itself that people fear, it is the possible consequences of rejection. Preparing to accept those consequences and viewing rejection as a learning experience that will bring you closer to success, will not only help you to conquer the fear of rejection, but help you to appreciate rejection itself.

I'm tempted to say that the top three reasons for hopelessness are rejection, rejection, rejection. But let's cast our net wider. 1) Not being able to write as well as we hoped we could. 2) Not being able to write at all. 3) Rejection.

I received rejection letters for ten years (one on a napkin, written in crayon.) I had all my rejection notices stored in a box. When the box was finally full I took it to the curb and set it on fire. The next day I went out and got a temp job.

We shouldn't romanticize rejection. There's nothing romantic about rejection. It's horrible.

I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt- and there is the story of mankind.

There are no real successes without rejection. The more rejection you get, the better you are, the more you've learned, the closer you are to your outcome... If you can handle rejection, you'll learn to get everything you want.

You can email me, but I prefer letters that come through conventional mail. I like letters that have been licked by strangers.

I realized how valuable the art and practice of writing letters are, and how important it is to remind people of what a treasure letters--handwritten letters--can be. In our throwaway era of quick phone calls, faxes, and email, it's all to easy never to find the time to write letters. That's a great pity--for historians and the rest of us.

The Zodiac letters from 1978 on were driven to Sacramento in a cardboard box, and these letters have never been refrigerated, which, for letters going back - what? - 30 years almost is a must for DNA.

For those of you who still believe in the Easter Bunny and that the letters that appear in your local newspaper come from concerned citizens who really care, I've got troubling news. At least in politics, most of the letters that get published on the letters-to-the-editor page originate in the campaign headquarters of the candidates.

I tell writers to keep reading, reading, reading. Read widely and deeply. And I tell them not to give up even after getting rejection letters. And only write what you love.

I'm talking to anyone who has been dumped - have not gotten the job you really wanted or have received those horrible rejection letters from grad school. You know, the disappointment of losing, or not getting something you badly want. When that happens, show what you are made of.

[A formula for answering controversial letters -- without even reading the letters:] Dear Sir (or Madame): You may be right.

I wrote poems in my corner of the Brooks Street station. I sent them to two editors who rejected them right off. I read those letters of rejection years later and I agreed with those editors.

Science is the search for truth, that is the effort to understand the world: it involves the rejection of bias, of dogma, of revelation, but not the rejection of morality.

My first job out of college was as an editorial assistant in a New York publishing house. Being an editorial assistant is the purgatory would-be editors must endure before they can ascend the ladder and begin acquiring books on their own. I spent a year filing paperwork, writing copy, and typing rejection letters.

The starkest rejection letter might be followed by a million-dollar advance. Don't let rejection start to look the same as failure.

I've had a lot of failures as well and rejection. As actor, it's actually mostly rejection but people think it's mostly success because they only see your successes - the films that get made.

They [Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler] never entrusted their letters to the mail. There was always a courier, someone to hand deliver their letters.

Evolution has programmed us to feel rejection in our guts. This is how the tribe inforced obedience, by wielding the threat of expulsion. Fear of rejection isn't just psychological; it's biological. It's in our cells.

I used to keep a folder with all my rejection letters in it - a few years into having a job, I burned it.

A good play is a good play. If you want to chalk up your rejection letters to the fact that you're a woman, that's your choice. But often you get a rejection letter because your play isn't ready. Or the time isn't ready for your play. And that has nothing to do with gender.

I’d recommend learning to accept rejection. Become friends with rejection. Be nice to rejection, because it’s a huge part of being a writer, no matter where you are in your career.

When I was into my 30s, I became increasingly depressed by rejection letters. I had had the feeling that by the time I was 30, I would be established. But I was not at all. By the time of 'Lives of Girls and Women,' I was into my 40s and I had become more thin-skinned.

What is rejection? Rejection is something that you try and you don't get.

My rejection at the Salon brought an end to my hesitation [to settle in Paris] since after this failure I can no longer claim to cope... alas, that fatal rejection has virtually taken the bread out of my mouth.

I sent in tons of submissions and proposals, and I collected my share of form rejection letters. Eventually, I found myself working at a comic book shop, where I met my future collaborator Brian Hurtt.

My father is my biggest literary influence. Recently, I've been looking through his letters. He was in the National Guard when I was a child, and whenever he left, he would write to me. He wrote letters to me all through college, and we still correspond. His letters, and my mother's, are one of my life's treasures.

Give rejection the finger, and rejection gives it back.

The best thing we can do with rejection is to make it a learning experience - rejection is a great teacher.

Most open letters undoubtedly come from a good place, rising out of genuine outrage or concern or care. There is, admittedly, also a smugness to most open letters: a sense that we, as the writers of such letters, know better than those to whom the letters are addressed. We will impart our opinions to you, with or without your consent.

If you stop to think about it, you’ll have to admit that all the stories in the world consist essentially of twenty-six letters. The letters are always the same, only the arrangement varies. From letters words are formed, from words sentences, from sentences chapters, and from chapters stories.

I wanted to do the comic strip. I tried to get it syndicated, and I sent some examples to a syndication company, and they sent me a rejection letter! I wasn't smart enough at the time to realize you shouldn't let rejection letters stop you. I thought that rejection letter meant I was not allowed to be a cartoonist in this world, so I put the rejection letter down and said, well, I'll be a stand-up comedian.

It's easy to feel spurned, especially when you return to your apartment and stare at the hundreds of rejection letters tacked to your bulletin board.

There prevails among men of letters, an opinion, that all appearance of science is particularly hateful to Women; and that therefore whoever desires to be well received in female assemblies, must qualify himself by a total rejection of all that is serious, rational, or important; must consider argument or criticism as perpetually interdicted; and devote all his attention to trifles, and all his eloquence to compliment.

I like to joke that I probably hold the world record for rejection letters. Yes, the truth is that I was fed up of being rejected repeatedly, and self-publicatio n was an act of defiance at traditional publishing. But life works in strange ways.

When I was growing up, I wanted to be a coach. I had people telling me you can't do this, you're not a great player. Be realistic. When I got rejection letters from colleges where I wanted to coach, my mom would say, "You are going to make it someday. You have something special within you and that is your spirit for life which will help you get to the top."