"I've never changed my mind about a project because someone wrote a very nice thank you note, but good thank you notes have definitely made me feel guilty. So if you want revenge on an agent, a nice thank you note is the best weapon."
Nathan Bransford

"This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don't consider it rejected. Consider that you've addressed it ‘to the editor who can appreciate my work’ and it has simply come back stamped ‘Not at this address’. Just keep looking for the right address."
Barbara Kingsolver

"A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason."
Margaret Atwood

"Before the gates of excellence the high gods have placed sweat; long is the road thereto and rough and steep at first; but when the heights are reached, then there is ease, though grievously hard in the winning."
Hesiod

"If writers were good businessmen, they'd have too much sense to be writers."
Irvin S. Cobb

"My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure."
Abraham Lincoln

"Life is easier to take than you'd think; all that is necessary is to accept the impossible, do without the indispensable and bear the intolerable."
Kathleen Norris

"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly."
Robert Francis Kennedy

"Success in almost any field depends more on energy and drive than it does on intelligence. This explains why we have so many stupid leaders."
Sloan Wilson

"Just remember--when you think all is lost, the future remains."
Bob Goddard

"At first they'll reject everything, particularly in your case. What you do is keep sending the same poems to the same people--after a decent interval, of course. After about the fourth or fifth time, they will actually have read them, and they will hear a little bell ring that they'll call the shock of recognition, and they'll take one."
Richard Palmer Blackmuir

"It takes most of us a long time to learn our craft. So keep at it. Don't give up."
Jacqueline Briskin

"An absolutely necessary part of a writer's equipment, almost as necessary as talent, is the ability to stand up under punishment, both the punishment the world hands out and the punishment he inflicts upon himself."
Irwin Shaw

"Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent."
James Baldwin

"Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness."
Georges Simonen

"We have read your manuscript with boundless delight. If we were to publish your paper, it would be impossible for us to publish any work of lower standard. And as it is unthinkable that in the next thousand years we shall see its equal, we are, to our regret, compelled to return your divine composition, and to beg you a thousand times to overlook our short sight and timidity."
a rejection from a Chinese economic journal

"But he that dare not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose."
Anne Bronte

"As difficult as it is for a writer to find a publisher--admittedly a daunting task--it is twice as difficult for a publisher to sort through the chaff, select the wheat, and profitably publish a worthy list."
Olivia Goldsmith

"Defeat never comes to any man until he admits it."
Josephus Daniels

"But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated."
Ernest Hemingway

"Success is that old ABC--ability, breaks, and courage."
Charles Luckman

"Eighty percent of success is showing up."
Woody Allen

"The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it's the same problem you had last year."
John Foster Dulles

"No one put a gun to your head and ordered you to become a writer. One writes out of his own choice and must be prepared to take the rough spots along the road with a certain equanimity, though allowed some grinding of the teeth."
Stanley Ellin

"Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure."
George E. Woodberry

"Writing is like hunting. There are brutally cold afternoons with nothing in sight, only the wind and your breaking heart. Then the moment when you bag something big. The entire process is beyond intoxicating."
Kate Braverman