top of page
.png){kind=small}
"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."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Advice quotes
"Ask a woman's advice, and whatever she advises, Do the very reverse and you're sure to be wise."
"Advice is one of those things it is far more blessed to give than to receive."
"Read the folklore masters. Go to galleries. Walk in the woods. That's what you need to be an artist or storyteller."
"Never go on a date unarmed. Words of wisdom from my father. Well, my foster father. I was an orphan, of course. The best kings always are."
"A bitter critic is the sweetest corrector."
Explore more quotes by Jerry Pournelle
"Asimov was the reason why we changed some rules in the SFWA, and I'm not convinced we changed it for the best."
"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."
"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."
"And meanwhile, the storytellers like me and Anderson, Silverberg... we tell stories. People like them. They want to know how it comes out, they want to know what the ending is."
"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."
"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."
"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?"
"To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection."
"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."
bottom of page