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"And that's another piece of advice I'll give junior writers; when you get to the point where they take you to lunch, let the editor suggest where to go."
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"Go the extra mile to do the undone, but work within your limits, and in doing so also, don't be a coward to question things within your limit that are not all that right, and don't be too arrogant or proud or be filled with excessive knowledge to do things which might though be within your limit, yet out of limit, for you must live and leave nothing, but distinctive and lasting footprints!"
"Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option."
"Never give anyone the advice to buy or sell shares, because the most benevolent price of advice can turn out badly."
"Always be careful of where you run to. When the going gets tough, take it easy and slow down, else you venture into the den of lions."
Explore more quotes by Jerry Pournelle
"Write a lot. And finish what you write. Don't join writer's clubs and go sit around having coffee reading pieces of your manuscript to people. Write it. Finish it. I set those rules up years ago, and nothing's changed."
"So, I guess the answer to your question is very few people can bring off a novel of the future because it's just so damn hard to make it look like the future."
"There were probably, what, 300 science-fiction members in the SFWA, of whom probably a hundred were active members in the sense that they were selling something every year, or every couple years."
"One the other hand, the publishing trend is ghastly, isn't it? Two hundred and something distributors are now down to 10 or 12? And what's the recruiting drive?"
"Somebody's always getting me to come lecture to their writing class, and I don't talk about writing at all, I talk about the business of making a living at this racket."
"I started in this racket in the early '70s, and when I was president of the Science Fiction Writers of America, of which I was like the sixth president, I was the first one nobody ever heard of."
"You see, I used to do a certain amount of market research by going to the local drugstore and seeing what the truck drivers would put up. Now it's all just copies from the latest best-seller list and damn little of anything else."
"The hard part of writing at all is sitting your ass down in a chair and writing it. There's always something better to do, like I've got an interview, sharpening the pencils, trimming the roses. There's always something better to do. Going to a writer's club?"
"Asimov was the reason why we changed some rules in the SFWA, and I'm not convinced we changed it for the best."
"We do a hard fantasy as well as hard science fiction, and I think I probably single-handedly recreated military science fiction. It was dead before I started working in it."
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