"It's really up to readers to decide.  We writers fill the pages, sure, but it's other folks who read and evaluate them."

"People have strong feelings about others pursuing their dreams. It's often a product of their own hopes, fears, and choices. You may have friends contact you from nowhere to encourage you. Others will question your talents, motives, and very worth as a writer."

"We all get rejected and criticized at every stage.  Feel the hurt and let it go."

"What people SHOULD preface their rule-dispensing [for creative pursuits] with is something like this: 'Hey, this is the way it worked for me.  Maybe it'll work for you too?  And if not, no worries.  We're still pals.'"

"It's all about using everything and spinning it into something creative.  Instead of kicking against the pricks, you readjust your trajectory and go with the current.  Instead of pushing back against people you feel are attacking you, you use your opponent's momentum to disable them, much as you would in ju-jitsu."

"Wait until the book is finished before making a judgment on its content. By the time you have gone through twenty drafts, the characters may have developed lives of their own, completely separate from the people you based them on in the beginning. And even if someone, at some time, gets upset with your words—so what? Live your life, sing your song. Anyone who loves you will want you to have that."

"Stop thinking about all the reasons you have not to write your memoir and what people in your family might think and just get busy writing it."

"Resist deep longing for approval.  One needs to write not what a public wants but what it needs.  The first kind of work is what your need for approval will generate; the second is what your struggle will bring forth."

"We were talking about Jack Nicholson, and that level of aspiration for the film [based on my novel].  What happened was a change in the hierarchy at Warner Brothers, and the people who had brought the project in no longer had power.  That was the first time that happened.  But it happened over and over.  You don't know what to believe, and you never know for sure why you're getting turned down, or even why they were interested in you in the first place."

"When you do get to create something, and you put it out for the world to see, if it’s free you’ll get a bunch of people who hate it, and if it’s not you’ll be called money hungry."

"Some of the criticism may be accurate; some might be completely off. But no matter what anyone says, it will not be your own idea, so you will have to keep those external notions at bay."

"You can't lie to yourself if you're going to be a memoirist.  Our personal failures and limitations and weak or fragile spots are the most interesting things to read about.  Again, it comes back to telling the truth as opposed to the thing we wish were true or ought to be true or assume at first glance to be true.  I think a memoirist really has to be willing to—not necessarily comfortable with—revealing their deepest emotions, motivations, and actions on the page for anyone to view and judge."

"I just remember getting bashed for them. But what is funny is that someone will bash them, then pick one out and say 'this one was the exception' and then another person will be bashing them and that won't be their exception, a different one'll be their exception. ... Some of those albums that people say were so bad are among my favorites."

"I used to worry about [negative criticism of my work] until I realized that if you look at the great attacks on literature in the last hundred years or so, they were almost all carried out by people who had not read the work in question."

"I encourage writers to not look at their reviews, and I usually don't." (artist)

"Something Ben Stiller had said to me a few years earlier: 'When you're on a film set and you've got to make endless decisions, you have to realise that you can't be worried about people's feelings.'"

"[Unlike books devoted to writing,] books written for painters do not imply that the chances are that the reader can never be anything but a conceited dauber, nor do textbooks on engineering start out by warning the student that because he has been able to make a grasshopper out of two rubber bands and a matchstick he is not to think that he is likely ever to be an honor to his chosen profession."

"As a general rule, I won't ever cut anything because I feel it makes me 'look bad' or is personally humiliating.  I am impervious to those considerations.  I lack a sense of personal discretion or protection in my work because I feel like, if this is what I do for a living, I have to do it 100 percent or not at all."

"Not only am I rarely creatively satisfied, but satisfaction comes with small victories.  There's usually more frustration than applause or happiness."

"I think that the short story has a tendency to prove people who pronounce [negatively] on it foolish."

"There are gasps and shouts, even some violinistic cries. He has sent several people scurrying to the woods in fear, which is unfortunate, but it is the sort of thing that happens when one finds the words that truly come from within oneself."

"If you tell people you're an artist, they'll tell you that’s not much of a career path and you should get a real job.  If you tell people you're building a tech startup platform for artists, they'll be impressed and want to hear more."

"To pretend self-publishing is never the right option, and that all writers who self-publish are talentless hacks who slap a book together and call it art?  Friends, that is dangerously close-minded thinking."

"Sharon Olds said that if you write down something and put it out into the world, it's a little murder.  It just is.  If you write down something and you put it in a drawer, it's a little suicide."

"Open book after book devoted to the writer's problems: in nine cases out of ten you will find, well toward the front of the volume, some very gloomy paragraphs warning you that you may be no writer at all, that you probably lack taste, judgment, imagination, and every trace of the special abilities necessary to turn yourself from an aspirant into an artist, or even into a passable craftsman.  You are likely to hear that your desire to write is perhaps only an infantile exhibitionism, or to be warned that because your friends think you a great writer (as if they ever did!) the world cannot be expected to share that fond opinion.  And so on, most tiresomely.  The reasons for this pessimism about young writers are dark to me."

"The broadest, most inoffensive, mainstream hits are so often the least 'talked about.' They just happen and wash over a disconcerting majority once a week. Again, this is fine if you just want commercial success but it's soul destroying if you have loftier ambitions."

"Our social moorings aren't the only things that restrain our creative impulses. We are also limited by false aesthetics: those notions that we have developed in schools and libraries, and from listening to critics that adhere to some misplaced notion of a literary canon."

"Few aspiring authors want a truly honest critique, especially if that critique advises them to toss their work in progress into the recycle bin and find another creative outlet.  That puts the reader in the unenviable position of trying to find nice things to say even when a manuscript is completely unsalvageable."

"Writing is not brain surgery—no one will die if someone doesn't like your story."

"A review is someone performing thinking, and our finest reviewers are, to my mind, no less remarkable than our finest atheletes."

"You can't listen to what people say.  There are always going to be people telling you 'you can't do this,' or 'I don't like this.'  There are so many writers who have gotten 80,000 rejections and then suddenly they sell a book and it's a huge critical and commercial success.  So you never know.  Just keep writing."

"I see a lot of people who want the things that come along with being a musician or artist, but don't know what they actually want to represent.  When you don't have a vision for what you want to put out there, it can lead to being influenced by those around you.  Everyone is going to have an opinion and give you advice and tell you how to do things.  But if you really want to do your thing and be successful doing something that's unique to you, then you need to have a clear idea of what you want.  You will be influenced by others, but you should have the strongest sense of what you're putting out there."

"When you're in art school, you're thrown into all of these vicious critiques.  But the point is to teach you that people's opinions can either have value or you can say, 'Fuck 'em!' and do what you do.  Someone will always think it's a piece of shit, so who cares what they think?  Just do what's important to you, hold yourself to the fire, make sure you're taking it seriously, and do the best you can.  That's enough."

"We're never fully satisfied.  Despite being happy with most of my work, I still constantly struggle with those inner demons who tell me it's all junk.  That said, the older I get, the less time I spend worrying about how others receive my work, or even what others are working on."

"Writing fiction, or at least trying to make a living by writing fiction, creates new ways for the writer to experience failure.  At first I was simply writing stories no one liked.  Then, once I got better, I started sending out the good stories to literary journals and getting rejected.  Then, once I started getting acceptances, I began receiving queries from agents who would then tell me I was not 'there' yet.  Then, once I got an agent, a year passed before he told me I was not progressing the way he had hoped, and we agreed to end our relationship.  Once I started writing short stories that were pretty good, everyone told me I really needed to write a novel.  Once I started writing short stories that were pretty good, everyone told me I really needed to write a novel.  Once I wrote a novel, it was rejected by everyone who read it.  Once I got enough publications to start applying for grants and awards, I didn't even come close to receiving any of them.  It was a weird cycle in which, instead of feeling happy I was getting better as a writer, I kept realizing how little I had actually progressed in the ways I started to quantify as success."

"Making yourself vulnerable and subjecting yourself to the judgment of others is a risk that you continue to take when you're creative."

"After rejection No. 40, I started lying to my friends about what I did on the weekends.  They were amazed by how many times a person could repaint her apartment.  The truth was, I was embarrassed for my friends and family to know I was still working on the same story, the one nobody apparently wanted to read."

"Nothing is so destructive in a field of artistic effort as a stock term of abuse. Anyone could say of any short story, 'A mere anecdote' just as anyone can say 'Incoherent!' of any novel or of any sonata that isn't studiously monotonous. The recession of enthusiasm for this compact, amusing form is closely associated in my mind with that discouraging imputation."

"I have the right to be certain of the sacredness of speech, and of the sanctity of the right to mock, comment, to argue and to utter."

"[Others'] objections should simply show you why [y]our work is so important."

"Remember that pianist who said that if he did not practice every day he would know, if he did not practice for two days, the critics would know, after three days, his audiences would know.  A variation of this is true for writers."

"At this moment in my career, after publishing twenty-seven books and at least as many short stories, I still get rejected on a regular basis. Recently I wrote a story that every major magazine rejected. After going to the major presses, I went to the smaller ones. Nobody will publish it—nobody. So don't despair—accepting rejection is part of the job description."

"Writing is a subjective sport, I'm afraid.  Strap on your helmet and flash your skinned knees with pride.  After all, only those with the courage to submit can be rejected."

"Your work will be rejected.  Often, always, and forever.  Good work.  Quality work.  Publishable work.  Work you've born your soul into.  You will be turned down not only for logic and for reason, but for the silliest of subjectivities: The editor's cat has just died, and your work is too sad.  The agent is moving in a darker publishing direction; your work is too light.  Your poems are too short.  Your essays are too long.  We've seen this before.  We've never seen this before and wouldn't know how to market it.  It's good, but it won't sell.  It's good, but it's just not right for us.  You do understand, don't you?"

"No matter what we write or how well we write it, we must all eventually make peace with the constant sting of rejection."

"I want anyone who has ever had an idea shot down by a supposed authority to take heed.  I have to say, my gasted is totally flabbered that anyone would dissuade a student from pursuing something based on an idea alone."

"Try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would."

"Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong."

"I was discouraged very early in my college years by people who told me I wasn't a real writer because I didn't write every day.  Things like that should not be said.  And anybody who says anything to you like that, you have to ignore them.  You know, there are no rules."

"I always distrust overly specific writing advice.  I don't agree with it, necessarily.  When you're thinking about what to write or how to write something, it's too easy to make a lot of arbitrary rules for yourself.  I think the difficult thing with learning how to write is not learning the style or rules, but figuring out what story you want to tell."

"If you aren't getting rejected by 90 percent of the things you apply to, you aren't aiming high enough."

"You like what you like. Nobody can tell you to like something that you don't, or not to like something you do—or if they do, it's not going to change anything in your head, no more than they can be made to like or dislike garlic or lobster or chocolate or olives or natto by you telling them to change their minds.  I don't expect everyone to love everything I write. I don't think that if you like something I write you'll like the next thing, any more than I love everything that the people whose work I enjoy do.  There are Dickens novels I think as good as anything anyone’s ever done, and Dickens books I will be very happy never to read again or think of again. I'm happy to know that my judgment is subjective, but then, that's the whole point of having a point of view.  I published American Gods after Stardust, and most of the people who loved Stardust did not love American Gods, and the people who loved American Gods and picked up Stardust next were often very disappointed indeed. And I am proud of both of them, as I am of all my art-children..."

"Editorial decisions are subjective.  ....  Writing is an ongoing process and should never end with a rejection letter."

"I think that most people who take offense are offended because they confuse the target of the joke with the subject of a joke. If you deal in taboo subjects—which I do, for a very good reason—just to bring up any subject that makes them feel comfortable and they straightaway assume it is 'wrong.' Well, it's not wrong. 'You haven't listened to the joke,' you know? People say to me, 'Is there anything you shouldn't joke about?' The answer is, 'No, it depends on what the joke is.' They wouldn't ask you, 'Is there anything you wouldn't write about?' You'd go, 'No, I could write about anything. It's what you say that counts.' Exactly. And the same with a comedian. You can joke about anything. It depends what the joke is and what side you come down on, where you land, you know?"

"Now I believe a writer is someone who writes. Maybe you get paid. Maybe you don't. Maybe people agree. Maybe they don't. You don't need anyone's approval or acceptance or imprimatur or validation to consider yourself a writer. But legacy pundits like agents and publishers don't want you to believe that. They want you to feel that the only way you can call yourself a writer is if they agree. And their approval comes at a high cost.  The legacy world doesn't want you to feel like you're a writer if all you do is self-publish. Because they need you to make money.  Your peers may not consider you a writer if all you do is self-publish. Because they need to protect their own identities, and that means dismissing yours.  You may not feel like a writer until you meet certain criteria. But consider this: who sets those criteria? You? Or an industry that wants to make money off of you?  Readers don't care. Readers just want a good book. Maybe we all should worry less about labeling, and more about writing. ...Writers write. Depending on your identity, that could empower you, or scare the crap out of you."

"No matter where you are in your career, whether you're published, unpublished or just starting out, walk through the world as a writer.  That's who you are, and that's what you want to be, and don't take any guff off anybody."

"You learn... the ways in which different types of people in the business respond to writing.  There's a way that agents respond. .... Then there's the way that other writers respond, which is they'll just tell you how they would have written it themselves.  And if they're a romance writer, their opinion of your novel isn't going to be that helpful.  But it's not that you don't necessarily engage those people, it's just [that] you learn the filter by which you're going to assess their feedback."

"Learn to separate constructive criticism from negative criticism.  There are going to be people who are never going to like your writing.  Ignore those people."

"I'm my own worst critic.  Editors are always calling me a good writer.  To me, I'm a horrible writer, and I keep that mindset so I never get lax or comfortable."

"I do believe that making one's book free remains an effective way to reach new readers who might not otherwise take a chance on your book.  I've had a number of positive reviews from readers who said they liked my book but would never have downloaded if it weren't free.  I do not agree with the argument that an author who makes his book free is inviting bad reviews from those readers who are trying a novel that is not in their preferred genre and may be less inclined to like it.  I believe a good book is a good book, and anything you can do to attract a new reader is worthwhile."

"I never read those reviews."

"If your readers aren't .... using words like, 'wow,' 'incredible' and 'amazing,' then you're probably not taking the reader to an emotionally satisfying extreme.  Extreme joy and pleasure is a required reading experience if you want to turn readers into fans, and turn fans into super fans.  Wow books turn readers into evangelists."