J.A. Konrath Quotes

If you can quit, quit. If you can't quit, stop complaining - this is what you chose.

Sir, this lane is for ten items or less. I’m counting thirteen items in your cart, including that hemorrhoid cream. And while hemorrhoids might give you a reason to be nasty, they don’t give you a reason to be in this lane.

There's a word for a writer who never gives up: published.

Some people are born with a fire inside them. The will to succeed. It isn’t a learned behavior. It’s just some unknown biological factor that makes them try harder.

All you need to know about plotting is twofold. 1. Give your characters goals. 2. Don't let them reach those goals.

If you can't be smart or funny, be brief.

Every tomorrow has two handles we can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith If you can quit, quit. If you can't quit, stop complaining - this is what you chose.

Fate is a future you didn't try hard enough to change.

Sorry to hear about your Dad." He shrugged. "He was seventy, and we always told him fast food would kill him." "Heart attack?" "He was hit by a Pizza Express truck.

You can't be both happy and ambitious.

Never having something is different than having something and losing it.

Before you make the key, study the lock.

Writers are essential. Readers are essential. Publishers are not.

Write the best book you possibly can, then dedicate yourself to getting people to read it.

Back in August, I wrote a post about the supposed race to the bottom with ebooks, refuting some nonsense written by an establishment bonehead. This meme won't die. People are still convinced that new ebooks are going to be priced at ten cents, and writers will starve, and this will cause a second Great Depression where banks will close and people will be forced to buy Kindles with food stamps, and then the earth will enter another ice age where all the bunnies will freeze to death.

As writers, we can do whatever we want to. We're only limited by our imaginations. What an amazing, incredible time to be alive. How lucky we all are.

Of course, Jack Kilborn is better than both of us combined and mixed with a side helping of the Bronte sisters.