M.J. Rose Quotes

The ancients had instincts and abilities that are lost to civilization today. Magic was real. It lived inside the shamans. Inside the priests. They passed it on from generation to generation. You have the dregs of that power in you. It it not the strength that it was, but you can access it. But to do so you must be willing to travel deep into your own darkness and be open to risk. To pull from the earth's energy.

When I do a workshop, there is always at least one author who comes up afterward and asks if I'll take a look at his or her book and consider blurbing it. For some reason, I can turn someone down in e-mail, but when he or she is looking me in the eye, I cave.

'Power Play' is a morality tale for our post-Enron world and - not incidentally - wildly entertaining. Nothing wrong with that.

Regret isn't like grief; it never lessens, just stays the same. A little hard ball in the pit of your stomach.

I wouldn't think it happens easily or often, never for some people. I imagine a love like that is like a fire starting with a spark and growing into a blaze becoming an engulfing passion too hot for most people to withstand.

The secret, which is not so secret after all, is that the people who we love live on in our hearts, in the beat of our blood.

Sometimes love worked out, but more often it failed

We need to write books that publicists and marketers and booksellers and book club leaders and librarians and readers can get excited about. That have something about them that makes them stand out. That makes them shine.

I think the most important thing we as writers can do is figure out how we define what success will mean to us and focus on that.

All the marketing and advertising sells the book as what it is and hopes that the book will be displayed so that your readers can find it.

Not a coincidence, but events coming full circle. The infinite possibilities of energy and spirit.

In my novels, there are twelve ancient 'memory tools,' all now lost. Each of the 'Reincarnationist' books revolves around a different tool.

Aunt Grace had once told me that we can romanticize the unknown far too easily. It is much harder but more satisfying to assign wonder to what we were familiar with.

As Oedipus learned, the more you run away from what is predetermined the more you run toward it.

Jenny Bell, you're quite an enigma. But that's true of every artist. And I'd rather be with a woman who can't be fully known than one who is all surface and no soul.

Ask your agent to set up a meeting with either your editor or the marketing department of the house or both so you can find out what they're doing, what they aren't, and what you can do to help.

Find out if your radio interviewer has read your book, or you are going to have to do that part of the job on air. It's okay if they haven't, but it's always better to be prepared for what's coming.

I've always felt writing is an art. Publishing is a business. I felt strongly if I was going to write, I would write what I wanted to, and if the 'market' didn't respond, there was nothing I could really do about it.

To be a decent writer you must have both empathy and imagination. While these attributes aid your art, they can plague your soul. You don't simply suffer your own sadness, experience your own longing and worry about your own wife and children, you are burdened with experiencing the emotional states of multitudes of others you don't know.

The owl," he was saying, "is one of the most curious creatures. A bird that stays awake when the rest of the world sleeps. They can see in the dark. I find that so interesting, to be mired in reality when the rest of the world is dreaming. What does he see and what does he know that the rest of the world is missing?

Freedom is just another word for being alone

If I present a boring personal life to my readers, it's going to be harder for them to think of my novels as thrilling.

The library at home when she was child had been her refuge. She gravitated to it. When she was anxious, just taking a book of a shelf calmed her. Opening the cover, feeling the paper's smoothness, smelling the sheets, the leather, even sometimes the ink, centered her.

Before there was a death there had been a life, and before that life a death and that there would be a life after this death too. The circles would continue on without end and everyone who was once connected would be connected again.

There's no one thing you can do to have success, but if you have a plan and you keep doing things, you'll eventually build to a success.

I grew up in New York and have lived here all my life. I think it's the best city in the world and can write about it with gusto and fervor and passion.

I thought if I put my book up on the Internet as a file that you could download, and I told people about it, maybe some people would download it and read it, and maybe I could get some response.

If your mom is still around, you're so lucky.

If ... if there is reincarnation, it's about forward motion. It has to be, or else we would all be forever stuck in the past.

More than 3,500 hardcover novels are published each year. Even the most avid reader buys fewer than one a week.

Nora Roberts, Stephen King, Lee Child and George R. R. Martin write wildly different books. Their writing, plotting and styles have little or nothing in common. But they all write books and characters that readers find appealing.

Thriller novelists get asked - berated, sometimes - about whether their work glorifies bad behavior, even, exploits human tragedy for entertainment.

Don't add people to your subscriber list just because they once wrote you a note. Or once answered a note you wrote to them. Don't put your address book into your newsletter database. Let your readers sign up.

I know some authors who have gotten $25,000 advances and put it all into marketing, others who allocate $5,000 or $1,000.

Jersey cows," Eva explained after Jac complimented the luxurious taste. "The butter and cream here are better than anywhere in the world."
"Not that we're prejudiced," Theo teased.

I'm not a good writer. It takes me a long time to get there. I write and then rewrite and revise and do it over and over until I'm satisfied.

Jacqueline Rose was so wonderful in so many ways, and I was really blessed to be her daughter. Of all the things I am because of her - there's no question: I am a writer because of her love of books.

The Fiction Writer's Co-op has 51 members, from celebrated NYT bestsellers to promising newcomers, and a waiting list.

The one thing I am now sure of is that if there is such a thing as destiny, it is a result of our passion, be that for money, power, or love. Passion, for better or worse. It can keep a soul alive even if all that survives is a shimmering. I've even seen it. I've been bathed in it. I've been changed by it.

I think that we need to live our lives for the present ... as if it is our one and only wild and wonderful life.

But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.

It's so easy to look foolish online.

I've always been fascinated by how the past impacts the present. For the first half of my career as a novelist, I wrote psychological suspense mysteries. I wanted to be a therapist but was told that while I was a fine diagnostician, I would be a terrible therapist because I wanted to solve everyone's problems.

Do send out a newsletter when you have a new book out or are going on tour. Also list relevant event dates and notifications of contests you are running.

Perfume is magic. It's mystery. We recreate the smell of a flower. Of wood. Of grass. We capture the essence of life. Liquefy it. We store memories. We make dreams," he told her once. "What we do is a wonder, an art, and we have a responsibility to do it well.

Don't send out a newsletter just to send out a newsletter. One newsletter a year that is really interesting is more beneficial than 12 that are boring. If you write two or three boring newsletters in a row, your readers will start to think you write boring books.

I just want to sit in my room and write books.

It was a fitting animal for a priest. Cats guard the secrets of the otherworld and are liaisons with mystic realms. Protectors of esoteric knowledge, cats can open the gates through which a priest can see the future and gain insight.

A mystery is a whodunit. You know what happened, but not how or who's behind it. A thriller, or a suspense, is a howdunit. You know what happened, and you usually know who did it, but you keep reading because you want to know how they pulled it off.

Needing someone doesn't make you weak, it makes you feel. And feeling is how you know you're alive. -Jack Reacher

No, the sadness will soften, its edges will become less rough. In time missing him will be the way you love him.

Does having three other children lessen your pain over the one who is lost? Not lessen the pain, no. But it keeps me wanting to draw breath. It keeps me alive. In nurturing and caring for another child you can love the child you lost.

I grew up in New York, and for the first ten years of my life, we lived across from the Metropolitan Museum. When I was an adult, I moved back to that neighborhood and lived there again.

In 1998, I self-published online in order to get a traditional deal.

Men are monsters all, and something in them wants to force others to see the world the same way they see it.

There is no debate that social media is a great tool for networking with others in our industry. It can lead to friendships, support, and serendipitous connections with reviewers, agents, reporters, or editors.

When I was in advertising, I did a great deal of work on television commercials. A co-worker and I wrote a screenplay, which led to a few more screenplays, and some were optioned by production companies. I was advised to move to California but didn't want to make the move. I decided to use another form of storytelling, so I wrote a novel.

One of the biggest differences between you and a traditionally published author is that a self-pubbed author is responsible for everything. Not just writing the book - but cover design, editing, producing, distribution, and publicity as well.

PR and marketing doesn't sell books. It gets attention for them. It sends readers to bookstores and websites to read a few pages.

From the very beginning, I envisioned success as selling enough books so I could keep getting published and continue to write what I wanted to without compromising.

(S)cents connects us to a past we can't always see, that seems lost but can so easily be conjured up and found.

There was, for many of us, a great escape in reading about the fantastic and supernatural during wartime. Terrors more terrible than those we were living through gave us an outlet for our anxiety.

Every culture has its version. It's universal. One of the things that is most fascinating about studying mythology is how so many of the stories and symbols are the same through the centuries and cultures. Just renamed and slightly altered.

I'm realistic about my career as a novelist. I'm certainly not a superstar and far, far from a household name, but I feel successful.

As a self-published author, you have the choice. Embrace the power to create a book that is truly yours. Don't be a whiner or a copycat.

When I sit down to write, I know everything I need to know ... I start writing, and within 30 seconds or 60 seconds, I'm watching a movie. I'm not making this stuff up; the characters are acting it out,and I'm just writing it down.

I began tailoring my books to cater to one or another universe of readers. I found it incredibly boring; and frankly, it felt stultifying. I'd previously been in advertising. I felt if I was going to create something to fit a specific market, I might as well have stayed with advertising.

The Kabbalah says if we have not fulfilled our condition during one life, we must commence another ... until we have acquired the condition that fits our reunion with God.

Ask your editor or ask your agent to find out what the house's goals are for your book before it comes out. Get some sense of expectations so you are prepared.

Paris is an unsolved puzzle. She inspires me in a way that other places don't. And she demands more of me. Just try to write about her without bumping into cliche after cliche.

I was taught to think outside the box. Before my grandfather was one of the original Mad Men, he and a group of other Air Force Intelligence officers formalized brainstorming as a problem solving technique. He taught the concept that creativity can be taught at Buffalo University. My dad invented toys. My mom was a photographer.

In your way that I have come to know and appreciate, you did not say anything. You didn't push me to say more. You waited. Your patience is a gift. You trusted our silence.

Don't spend more than 10% of your marketing/PR budget on a trailer. Trailers have to be marketed, too. So, far too many authors wind up marketing their trailers instead of their books.

Twitter is worth it if you like tweeting. Same is true of Facebook. Or Pinterest. Nothing wrong with having a social presence.

If no one knows your book is out there, no one will think about buying it. It's as simple as that.

I work on one book at a time. And yes, I am immersed. Six days a week for four to six hours a day. In between books, I stop writing for as much as two to three months, but during that time, I do research and think, plot and plan the book.

I've had a dozen novels published and have made far more than a dozen mistakes. Which is why Randy Susan Meyers and I wrote a guidebook to help authors avoid making our mistakes.

I know one writer who has been subscribing authors without their permission and sending out what she thinks are helpful advice sheets, but they come off as if she's a know-it-all. She thinks she's marketing herself and her work. All she's really doing is turning readers off.

One man's ugliness can blind another to the world's magic.

We're all broken in one way or another, but it's through the cracks in our souls that the light comes through. And the light, Jenny, that's our art. Now, paint. Paint as if your life depends on it.

They say every writer really just writes about one thing over and over. I guess my one thing is how the past impacts the present.

The most satisfying thrillers send ordinary people into battle against the forces of evil - otherwise known as greed, ego, rage, fear and laziness - and bring them out bloodied but whole.

There are no accidents of fate. Every act has a reaction through lives, through time. Déjà vu and coincidence are God tapping you on the shoulder, telling you to pay attention, showing you that you are walking in the footprint of your own reincarnation.

There's almost no author alive who isn't weathering the tumultuous changes in the publishing industry.

We see what we want to see when we look at someone. Like a diamond before it has been cut. We can guess at its brilliance but can't see the faults until the stone has been cut and polished. Only then can we glimpse inside and see the occlusions and the clarity.

You shouldn't talk about yourself all the time - most of us aren't for sale. Our books are. Talk about them. It's not a question of whether or not you're fascinating on a personal level - it's that your trivia and trials might not have any connection to the tone, tenor and sense of your books.

As consumers, we are faced with hundreds of choices - and when it comes to books, thousands of choices.

All you have to do is open yourself up to the cosmos as it lays itself before you. See it in all its mysterious dimensions. Without prejudice. Without assumption ... All you ever needed was the key to open yourself to it. And that key is the wonder of the world. All the songs you could never remember but couldn't forget? You can find them now.

Sometimes what you mustn't do is just as just as important as what you must do.

The dead live as long as someone who loves them lives.

One Tweet can be heard 'round the world if the right people retweet it and the right people notice it on their feeds.

A curious mind is the most important attribute any man or woman can possess.

Love, like energy, never dies. You lose people only in the moment. But time is a long road that circles back. At some point the missing turns into love and returns.

The business of living can steal away the wonder of life.

When I was a kid, I read many of my mom's books. Sometimes, there were mysteries, but there were no delineations, and my mother never talked about book genres. Nor did we differentiate genres in school.

Social media buzz can lead to huge successes when people spread the word about something they love and want to share. But authors creating their own buzz? Making their own noise? It's hard to make a lot of noise on our own about our own work. Except, sadly, negative noise.

Recognize that the great majority of us aren't trained actors and entertainers. Usually, it's not our faces, our bodies, our personas or our stage presence that sells our books. It's our stories, our visions and our voices.

I've always been fascinated by the concept of reincarnation. I learned that many brilliant people were interested in reincarnation, including Carl Jung. I'm a big Jungian. So I began writing novels involving theories integrating past and present, even if the past element in the novel took place 500 or 1,000 years ago.

There was an ingredient used in perfumes and remedies in the Middle Ages called 'momie' that is certainly one of the most fascinating I've come across.

I was an avid reader, but never thought seriously about writing a novel until I was in my thirties. I took no formal fiction-writing courses and never thought about these categories when I wrote my first novel.