Patrick Nielsen Hayden Quotes

January 2, 1959

Patrick Nielsen Hayden (born January 2, 1959) is a science fiction editor, writer, teacher, and musician. He is also a commentator on many matters in publishing and on politics, not a few of which can be found on the blog he writes with his wife, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, called Making Light.

So many people’s school experience contains at least one instance of being looked down upon because they didn’t care for one or more of the sacred mutant outcroppings of High Modernism, and they concluded from this that Literature is all about impenetrable stuff that they don’t like. That damn Hemingway with his crazy free verse.

Oh No Lev Grossman No, in Making Light (30 August 2009)]

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This is stupid. I now have stupid all over me.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden
— "Bad advice on cover letters", in Making Light (18 May 2004)

Tags: stupid, now, over, me

Do we really have to wander around apologizing for enjoying plot, just because James Wood and a few dozen other arch-aesthetes sniff at it? It's like being careful not to sing pop songs in the shower because some guy in the local alt-weekly is a music snob.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden
— "Oh No Lev Grossman No", in Making Light (30 August 2009)

Tags: we, wander, apologizing, enjoying, plot, Wood, few, dozen, other

Book publishing was never a heaven “run by editors”, and it is by no means today a hell “run by accountants.” If our “sole interest” was “instant profit,” not only would we never do any number of the things we actually do every day, we probably wouldn’t be in book publishing at all.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden
— A simple, mildly incredulous philippic, in Making Light, April 7, 2010.

Tags: Book, publishing, never, heaven, run, editors, means, today, hell

Patrick Nielsen Hayden Quotes

January 2, 1959

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