Authors should do multiple submissions to agents. I mean, that's the way the business world works and whether or not the industry likes it or not, they can't stop you from submitting to multiple agents and you know what? If an agent misses out on you because they took too long with your query letter, tough luck for them.
If you aim for parody right off the bat and it misses, no offense to the filmmakers, but it is Meet the Spartans.
If you know anything about ducks, you know a baby duck will imprint itself on you. It misses its mother.
I'm good friends with The Rock, and I talk to him all the time. And he says that, even though his movie career has taken off, he misses the instant gratification of wrestling, and the live crowds, and I could see being that way myself.
When you're walking around in Shanghai, I called it the City of Near Misses, because they do not stop for pedestrians. And the pedestrians do not have the right of way. It's those little things that no one tells you.
A guitar player goes on the road, and he misses his girlfriend for a while, but he manages to get along. A horn player gets out on the road, plays two or three towns, and then he'll get lonely, and next thing you know, he's packed up and left. It's better not to hire him in the first place.
If you hate somebody, it's like a boomerang that misses its target and comes back and hits you in the head. The one who hates is the one who hurts.
Focusing on that one review you feel is unfair misses the value, which is the whole symphony of opinions you get on your page.
I am not driven by any bitterness by what happened in Athens. I learnt a lot of lessons from it and probably came through it a stronger person in the end. There have been a lot of near misses, and that's taught me to keep persevering and that there is a chance it can come right.
I think that this misses out on some of the interesting narrative realities, which is that it actually doesn't work very well, that eliminating diversity is actually a really good way to make a species and its individuals less robust.