Quotes About Patience

If you file your waste-paper basket for fifty years, you have a public library.

They held up 'The Outlaw' for five years. And Howard Hughes had me doing publicity for it every day, five days a week for five years.

I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings.

I began writing seriously in my mid-20s and didn't publish my first book until I was 41.

As far as the world was concerned, from 1979 to 1996, I didn't publish any original material; it just wasn't there.

My first short story sale was to a magazine that sat on the story forever... and never did publish it.

Academia does not provide many opportunities for immediate gratification. You work for two years on a project, it takes two more years to get it published, and then you start hoping someone might read it.

Write a million words before thinking about getting published.

It took seven years from the day I decided I wanted to write fiction to actually getting a book published.

If, after five years, I hadn't had anything published, I was just going to forget it and go back to TV full-time until I retired or they put me out to pasture.

I always assumed I could never make a living out of literary fiction, and I was right. When I did try, it took four years before being published.

I didn't get one word published until I was well into my 30s. But I always tried.

Each of my books has taken me a different length of time to write - eight months for 'Seesaw Girl,' eight months for 'Shard,' three years for 'When My Name Was Keoko!' The publisher takes another year and a half to work on the book, so altogether each book can take up to three or four years to publish.

When my book was first sent out to publishers, my agent told me to buy a lot of ice-cream and wait. So I bought a gigantic amount of ice-cream, and huddled by the freezer eating it and shaking, hoping someone would like it.

I was 40 years old before I became an overnight success, and I'd been publishing for 20 years.

The process of writing a book is so removed in my mind from the process of publishing it that I often forget for great stretches that I eventually hope to do the latter.

I always think of a show like a plant - a little pruning now and then keeps it healthy, but you shouldn't pull it out and chop the roots up.

You have to respect your parents. They are giving you an at-bat. If you're an entrepreneur and go into the family business, you want to grow fast. Patience is important. But respect the other party... My dad and I pulled it off because we really respect each other.

If you grow up somewhere where the pace of life is very slow you enjoy the gaps between the pulses. I read a lot and, boy, did I practise the piano.

The pulse of the People is still so high as to call for more bleeding, before quinine can be administered with any hope of benefit.

You would have to go really crazy on me before I throw a punch.

You can have the perfect plan through the first punch but then you have to take the fight second by second.

Never go for the punch line. There might be something funnier on the way.

I don't go for knockout punches.