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"That wasn't a bad price for a first book. My agent upped it as much as possible. I was 27 and had nothing behind me. I was working like a fool to earn a living and pay for my apartment."
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Exlpore more Writing quotes
"It just happens to be the way that I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them."
"A writer's primary goal is to make sense. The bookstore's is to make cents."
"Remember Stephen King's First Rule of Writers and Agents, learned by bitter personal experience: You don't need one until you're making enough for someone to steal ... and if you're making that much, you'll be able to take your pick of good agents."
"Write out of love. Your piece will finish itself."
"At the inauguration of each sentence, the writer commences with an optimistic sense of curiosity. Similar to an inquisitive explorer, a writer begins each thoughtful decree with an appreciative sense of the unknown and ends with a reverent regard for the unanswerable. Repeating this instigating act of discovery by placing a combination of sentences down on paper creates a unique verdict. The writer's compilation of pronouncements expresses their interpretation of life. Replicating this creative endeavor in the futile effort to say it all imitates the revolving mystery of life where physical reality and mysterious forces of nature operate upon humankind."
"One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed."
"An author's operating charter is to unearth embedded symbols that reflect complementary and inconsistent relationships of our collective assemblage, combine harmonizing and contradictory conceptions that motivate us, and delve larger truths out of variable and erratic elements of human nature."
Explore more quotes by Patricia Highsmith
"Robert Walker as Bruno was excellent. He had elegance and humor, and the proper fondness for his mother."
"A few years ago, there were requests to me, Can we make this? I said that I have no rights. Contact the Hitchcock estate, which won't release it for a remake."
"I was in New York. Hitchcock was in California. He rang me to make a report on his progress and said, I'm having trouble. I've just sacked my second screenwriter."
"Some fellow from the Third World kept hammering for prizes for a Communist film which was rotten."
"I have Graham Greene's telephone number, but I wouldn't dream of using it. I don't seek out writers because we all want to be alone."
"If people have bought something of mine, they know by now that I will decline writing it for the movies."
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