Quotes from Phyllis A. Whitney

A good book isn't written, it's rewritten.

You must want to enough. Enough to take all the rejections, enough to pay the price of disappointment and discouragement while you are learning. Like any other artist you must learn your craft—then you can add all the genius you like.

As good as' always spells mediocrity. But when a writer's work is in competition with all those thousands of other manuscripts that pour over an editor's desk, he cannot afford to be 'as good as'; he (or she) must be 'better than.

Broken hearts mend. It's a lot harder to mend broken lives.

Good stories are not written, they are rewritten

Problem, purpose, conflict, goal. Use them. Think about them while you are in the planning phase of your novel; keep these elements at the back of your mind to guide you while you write. When you have written a scene, make sure they are all there, or that if one or another is missing, it is intentional and the effect is what you want.

There was a brass bedstead with a tan spread, on which slept a big, tiger-striped yellow cat.

San Francisco was invigorating. She looked about in utter delight.

Indignantly Allison hooked the great cat over her shoulder like a fur piece. "Comstock is not a savage. Next to my brother Nick he's the finest gentleman in all San Francisco.

I suppose we run into accidents and coincidences every day. What matters are the choices we make. If we let an important chance slip by without even trying, then what do we have?

Emotions often change by morning. A sorrow that seems unbearable in the darkness often disappears with the coming of the sun.

Of course everyone's a person. But sometimes we act as if people were only labels. Like deaf, or blind, or lame. We forget about the person and only see the word.

If you're sorry for her, that means you're putting yourself above her. Anything can be terrible if we make it terrible, or if we let other people tell us how terrible it is.

One of the things I like about big cities is the way people of different races and religions get to know one another. There's so much we all need to learn. If we only talk to our own kind of people , how can we learn enough in time to learn to live safely in the sort of world we have today?

How foolishly we all bound ourselves into the very chains that could destroy us.

The giving of love took nothing from others.

Most of my writing has been concerned with understanding between people. Whether of different races, or religions, or even in the same family I tried in my books...to deal with the subject of understanding the other fellow.

Obsessions never count the cost.

green trench coat so that it hid brown hair that reached

Gracious, there's that horrible cat! Don't touch him, miss. He's possessed. He goes and comes as he pleases and there's no help for it. I do believe he goes through closed doors, he's that sneaky.

Good stories are not written. They are rewritten.

People have talents that are different. Where does the creative flow come from - inside us or from a higher power? I don't ask any questions. I just write it down.

Nobody wanted me. I just kept writing books and learning my craft. Most writers aren't very good in the beginning.

I tell a good story.