Literary Agent Quotes

A literary agent is nothing but a cheap salesman (or woman); while a writer is a cheap salesman (or woman) who also has to actually write the books. ~ John Hodgman

My mom and dad were actors when they were younger and had a horrible experience of it. My dad became a literary agent and my mom a casting director. ~ Daniel Radcliffe

Probably because I really love this bookmaking and storytelling world, I'd been thinking for years about the possibility of becoming a literary agent. ~ Rebecca Stead

My first novel took almost six years to sell and was rejected 37 times in the interim, and then finally sold for the smallest amount of money my literary agent had ever negotiated for a work of fiction. ~ Daniel Handler

The way 'The Icarus Girl' came about was by me just basically bragging it with a literary agent and telling him I'd written 150 pages when I'd only written 20. And I think it was when the agent e-mailed me back right the very next day after sending him the 20 pages and asking to see the other 130. ~ Helen Oyeyemi

As the idealized mother, I might choose Irene Dunne as the mother in 'I Remember Mama' who strives and not just cooks and scrubs for her children, but who also acts as her daughter's literary agent. ~ Richard Corliss

Anuj Bahari has always been a really good literary agent for me. What a good agent does is that he manages many of your business aspects so you can keep your time free for writing. ~ Amish Tripathi

Anyway, back to the crush. Sorry to shift gears so fast, but we both know why we're here. I mean, if I wanted to discuss the existential angst of motherhood I'd be writing in a journal. Diaries are for the down and dirty, the stuff you don't want people to ever find out about you. Journals are the things you leave open around the house, hoping a literary agent will wander in, read it and declare you the next genius of your age. ~ Lani Diane Rich

An author is free, even here in hell, if he knows that the literary agent is almighty and that he by himself is impotent. ~ David Duff Tom Fahy

I would have died, before a literary agent ever committed to my book. This is why I chose to empower myself by self publishing. ~ Mary Sage Nguyen

Hell hath no fury like a hustler with a literary agent. ~ Frank Sinatra

I call myself a literary agent simply to distinguish myself from actors' agents. ~ Irving Paul Lazar

I said to my agent, 'I want short, sharp, well-paid jobs because I haven't got time for anything else.' ~ Billie Whitelaw

Literary critics, like a herd of cows or a school of fish, always face in the same direction, obeying that love for unity that every critic requires. ~ Edward Abbey

Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticizing. Criticism can never be a science: it is, in the first place, much too personal, and in the second, it is concerned with values that science ignores. The touchstone is emotion, not reason. We judge a work of art by its effect on our sincere and vital emotion, and nothing else. All the critical twiddle-twaddle about style and form, all this pseudoscientific classifying and analysing of books in an imitation-botanical fashion, is mere impertinence and mostly dull jargon. ~ D.H. Lawrence

You see, in America, it's quite standard for an actor to sign, at the beginning of a series, for five or seven years. The maximum any British agent will allow you to have over an actor is three years. ~ Julian Fellowes

When we are very young, we tend to regard the ability to use a colon much as a budding pianist regards the ability to play with crossed hands: many of us, when we are older, regard it as a proof of literary skill, maturity, even of sophistication; and many; whether young, not so young, or old, employ it gauchely, haphazardly, or at best inconsistently. ~ Eric Partridge

So long as the mental and moral instruction of man is left solely in the hands of hired servants of the public
let them be teachers of religion, professors of colleges, authors of books, or editors of journals or periodical publications, dependent upon their literary incomes for their daily bread, so long shall we hear but half the truth; and well if we hear so much. Our teachers, political, scientific, moral, or religious; our writers, grave or gay, are compelled to administer to our prejudices and to perpetuate our ignorance. ~ Frances Wright

I am driven to literary examples because you, the reader, and I do not live in the same neighbourhood; if we did, there would unfortunately be no difficulty about replacing them with examples from real life. ~ C.S. Lewis

Could a literary life be referred to with the iambic pentameter of, say, harnessing wind power, transplanting hearts or saving the whales. Or did it necessitate the sombre and monotonous dirge of software, priority banking or turbine building. ~ Anita Nair

Few things are better in the world than a room full of librarians. I consider them literary heroes. The keepers and defenders of the written word. ~ Louise Penny

Money, dished out in quantities fitting the context, is a social lubricant here. It eases passage even as it maintains hierarchies. Fifty naira for the man who helps you back out from the parking spot, two hundred naira for the police officer who stops you for no good reason in the dead of night, ten thousand for the clearing agent who helps you bring your imported crate through customs. For each transaction, there is a suitable amount that helps things on their way. No one else seems to worry, as I do, that the money demanded by someone whose finger hovers over the trigger of a AK-47 is less a tip than a ransom. I feel that my worrying about it is a luxury that few can afford. For many Nigerians, the giving and receiving of bribes, tips, extortion money, or alms
the categories are fluid
is not thought of in moral terms. It is seen either as a mild irritant or as an opportunity. It is a way of getting things done, neither more nor less than what money is there for. ~ Teju Cole

I think, being an actress, you know that you're getting old. I'm 44. I mean, an agent said when I turned 40, "It won't get better." ~ Charlotte Gainsbourg

Words - I wonder if you can realize how much I love them. You are too much preoccupied with mere things and ideas and people to understand the full beauty of words. Your mind is not a literary mind. ~ Aldous Huxley

Write first. Worry about getting an agent or publisher later. Write it first. Prove you can do it and then others will listen. Tons of people talk about books they want to write. Far fewer are those who actually complete that vision. Don't be a talker. ~ Po Bronson

It is a curious fact of literary history that a story which describes the loss of a gigantic prize provided the author with the greatest prize of his career. - ~ Ernest Hemingway,

It's never really easy to be successful as a writer when you're trying to write literary fiction. You've already limited your readership limited by that choice. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Books took, in her young life, the place of companions and childish games. She read a great deal without guidance or discrimination, and gained all her ideas on life, all her faith, all her ideals and aims and aspirations from books. Books stood between her and reality, and hid from her those deep truths that can never be learnt from even the greatest literary production, but can only be understood after long years of untiring observation and experience. It was in books also that Irene found her ideal of the man she could love. Her hero was an exceedingly complicated character. ~ Aimee Dostoyevsky

Now, Mr. Antonio. I understand that there are people who are close to you who want me dead."
"No, mija. They don't want you dead."
"Then explain this." I handed him the picture.
He chuckled again.
"No, they don't want you dead. That would be too easy. They want revenge."
Cold sweat broke out all over me, but I kept my face calm. I looked at him straight in the eye.
"Well, then they are going to be quite disappointed, aren't they?" I flashed my teeth at him.
"Senorita, you might want to warn Senor Smith, you see, my nephew he doesn't like to share, and if he sees another man after you, he'll get very, eh, aggressive." The silver fox looked at me and winked.
"Oh, he won't have to worry." I said as I was walking out the door. "I doubt he will be alive long enough to know Agent Smith."
Then I slammed the door. ~ Rumi Antoinette

Once you decide to forgive, you initiate the healing process. Forgiveness gives your soul permission to move on to the higher and healthier ground of emotional recovery. Forgiveness is to your soul what antibiotics are to infection. It is the curative agent that will help to fully restore your soul. It doesn't immediately remove the pain of defense but it does start you on the road to recovery. ~ Will Davis Jr.

When a person has a poor ear for music he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He keeps near the tune, but it is not the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he doesn't say it. ~ Mark Twain

I've always felt strongly that a writer shouldn't be engaged with other writers, or with people who make books, or even with people who read them. I think the farther away you get from the literary traffic, the closer you are to sources. I mean, a writer doesn't really live; he observes. ~ Nelson Algren

Our job, then, is two-fold: to focus on our own failings as writers. But also to speak more forcefully as advocates for literature. Books are a powerful antidote for loneliness, for the moral purposelessness of the leisure class. It's our job to convince the 95 percent of people who don't read books, who instead medicate themselves in front of screens, that literary art isn't some esoteric tradition, but a direct path to meaning, to an understanding of the terror that lives beneath our consumptive ennui. ~ Steve Almond

I will frankly confess that I was convinced that God had ordained me to do certain things for the service of my nation, things that perhaps could not be done by anyone else. In whatever I have done and whatever I do in the future, I consider myself as an agent of the will of God. ~ Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

Probably I'm more of a fan of the literary references than the pop-culture references. But I do go to the pop-culture well quite frequently because people, I think, are sort of inherently ready to laugh at that. It's a free laugh almost. Usually, everybody gets it. ~ Adam Reed

I dislike literary jargon and never use it. Criticism has only one function and that is to help readers read and understand literature. It is not a science, it is an aid to art. ~ Anne Stevenson

It sometimes seemed to Alex that the whole universe was against him. Getting away from FLamingo Bay had almost killed him. It had been an exhausting struggle against time, the elements, and Drevin's firepower.
And now he was going back.
It was the CIA agent, Ed Shulsky, who had made it happen.
Alex, you know the place. I need you to tell me where they're holding Tamara. You can give me a layout of the island. Anyway, we don't have much time. You saw for yourself. The rocket is on its way, and if what you've told me is true-"
It is." Alex felt a spurt of annoyance. Why should the American doubt, even for a moment, what he said? Was it perhaps because he was only fourteen?
Shulsky noticed his reaction. "I'm sorry. That was out of line. But this plan of his, Ark Angel...Washington..." He shook his head. "It's beyond anything we could have imagined. And that's why we have to take him out. Right now. We don't have time to drop you off."
But you're too late," Alex argued. "Gabriel 7 has gone. What are going to do? Shoot it down? ~ Anthony Horowitz

The only answer in these modern times, as in all other times, is the blood of Christ. When our conscience rises up and condemns us, where will we turn? We turn to Christ. We turn to the suffering and death of Christ - the blood of Christ. This is the only cleansing agent in the universe that can give the conscience relief in life and peace in death. ~ John Piper

I no more thought of style or literary excellence than the mother who rushes into the street and cries for help to save her children from a burning house, thinks of the teachings of the rhetorician or the elocutionist. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

His eyesight wasn't as keen as it had been, but he knew a changing mind when he saw it. ~ Bebe Moore Campbell

Changes in our aesthetic tastes have no value or meaning in and of themselves; what has value and meaning is the idea of change itself. Or, better stated: not change in and of itself, but change as an agent or inspiration of modern creations. ~ Octavio Paz

The most celebrated American author of the twentieth century, Bellow objected during the first part of his career to being designated a "Jewish writer, " but it was he who demonstrated how a Jewish voice could speak for an integrated America. With Bellow, Jewishness moved in from the immigrant margins to become a new form of American regionalism. Yet he did not have to write about Jews in order to write as a Jew. Bellow's curious mingling of laughter and trembling is particularly manifest in his novel Henderson the Rain King, that follows an archetypal Protestant American into mythic Africa. Bellow not only influenced and paved the way for other American Jewish writers like Philip Roth and Cynthia Ozick, but naturalized the immigrant voice: the American novel came to seem freshly authentic when it spoke in the voice of one of its discernible minorities. ~ Hana Wirth-Nesher

I met an agent through my modeling agency who encouraged me to go out and audition for sitcoms, and I was absolutely petrified because I had no desire to do it. ~ Robin Wright

Suspense: the only literary tool that has any effect upon tyrants and savages. ~ E. M. Forster

If I like a movie, I'm definitely advocating for it, but it's not "you should see this" or "you shouldn't see this." I try to take a longer view about what the movie is doing and where it fits in the context of other things, in the way that certain good literary criticism tries to do the same thing. ~ Wesley Morris

Amateur comes from the Latin agent amatus. To love. Never worry about love. Love delivers. It's the incompetent professionals that'll screw you. ~ C.D. Reiss