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Chance Quotes

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Chance Quotes

“The single most important technique for making progress is to write ten words. Doesn't matter if you're badly stuck, or your day is completely jam-packed, or you're away from your computer - carry a small paper notebook and write a sentence of description while you're waiting on line at a coffee shop. I think of this as baiting a hook. Even if you have a few days in a row where nothing comes except those ten words, I find that as long as you have to think about the novel enough to write ten words, the chances are that more will come.”

“From the moment I start a new novel, life's just one endless torture. The first few chapters may go fairly well and I may feel there's still a chance to prove my worth, but that feeling soon disappears and every day I feel less and less satisfied.”

Feels Firsts Wells May Stills Moments Feelings Chance Novel Prove Disappear Endless Satisfied Torture Just One Chapters Dissatisfaction

Author:Emile Zola

“If the novel is dying, I see no chance that dismembering it will revive it.”

Ifs Chance Novel Dying Revive

Book:Parthian Words

Source: Parthian Words

“The kind of response I hope for when I write my novels for children: to give them a chance to recognize something of their own feelings -- about themselves, their parents, their friends -- and their own situation as a kind of subject race, always at the mercy of the adults who mostly run their lives for them.”

Giving Writing Kind Children Feelings Running Parent Chance Race Situation Novel Subjects Adults Mercy Response

Author:Nina Bawden

“If you enjoy math and you write novels, it's very rare that you'll get a chance to put your math into a novel. I leapt at the chance.”

Ifs Writing Enjoy Chance Novel Math

Author:Mark Haddon

“Publishers love to compartmentalize, and Second Chance was not an easy novel to define.”

Easy Chance Novel Publishers Second Chance

Author:Chet Williamson

“It was the ponderous battering ram of his novels that opened the way through the genteel reticences of American nineteenth-century fiction. . . Without [Theodore] Dreiser's treading out a path for naturalism none of us would have had a chance to publish.”

Way Chance Fiction Novel Path Century Publish Nineteenth Century Naturalism Rams Treading Theodore Reticence Battering

Book:The Best Times: An Informal Memoir

Source: The Best Times: An Informal Memoir

“Imitation both unconscious and conscious is par excellence the educational method of the family. It is plain that a considerable part of the adaptation of living beings to their environment, i.e., of beings that are born plastic, is passed on from generation to generation through imitation. Were this not so, much if not all of the road traversed by one generation would have to be travelled by the next generation from the very beginning and without short-cuts. Consequently there would be little chance for the novel adaptation, the propitious individual variation, that constitutes progress.”

“My hope is that my novels reflect the reality of a world where good and evil exist, imperfect people make mistakes, but a perfect Heavenly Father offers forgiveness and second chances.”

People World Reality Evil Father Chance Perfect Mistake Novel Offers Good And Evil Making Mistakes Heavenly Imperfect Second Chance Heavenly Father People Make Mistakes

Author:Julie Klassen

“I had an idea for a medical conspiracy thriller. Since it was non-horror, I didn't want the publishers and editors bringing a lot of baggage - my history as a genre writer in the SF and horror fields, for instance - to the novel when they read it. I wanted them to consider the book solely on its own merits. So I called myself Colin Andrews. I was tired of seeing my books at floor level. Not that Herman Wouk and Phyllis Whitney and William Wharton are bad company, but I wanted to be up at eye level for a change, where people with bad backs could get a chance to see my books.”

People Want Book Ideas Eye Wanted Chance Levels Company Novel Seeing Fields Horror Tired Medical Instance Genre Merit Editors Conspiracy Publishers Thrillers Baggage Andrew Whitney Bad Company

Author:F. Paul Wilson

“Since my first novel was rescued from a slush pile, it makes me sad that most publishing houses no longer accept unsolicited manuscripts. Nor are many willing to take chances on novels that are not deemed immediately "marketable."”

Firsts House Chance Accepting Novel Willing Publishing Take A Chance Manuscripts Publishing House Slush

Author:Katherine Paterson

“One can't found a novel theology on Nothing, and nothing is so secure a foundation as a contradiction. Look at the great successes of the past--they say their deities are the masters of all the universes, and yet that they require grandmothers to defend them, as if they were children frightened by poultry. Or that the authority that punishes no one while there exists a chance for reformation will punish everyone when there is no possibility anyone will become the better for it.”

Source: Shadow & Claw: The First Half of 'The Book of the New Sun'

“I really do believe that chance favours a prepared mind. Wallace Stegner, who was one of my teachers when I was at Stanford, preached that writing a novel is not something that can be done in a sprint. That it's a marathon. You have to pace yourself. He himself wrote two pages every day and gave himself a day off at Christmas. His argument was at the end of a year, no matter what, you'd got 700 pages and that there's got to be something worth keeping.”

Writing Years Mind Believe Two Ends Matter Done Chance Novel Teacher Pages Argument No Matter What Prepared Pace Favour Marathon Days Off Sprint Stanford Pace Yourself

Author:Scott Turow