Popular quotes about Author! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 10
I see the author as the person who has written; the writer, the one involved in the process of writing. And they're not necessarily friends. The writer is the one I want to reinforce; the author would just feed on the reviews - so I'm in favour of starving him.
Edward St AubynTokyo Heist is a fast-paced, exotic reading adventure, a story where The da Vinci Code meets the wildly popular manga genre! Author Diana Renn infuses protagonist Violet with plenty of chikara (power) and Renn's fresh, spot-on author's voice is irresistible. I couldn't put it down!
Alane FergusonHere's what I think: the best author photo ever taken is the author photo of you holding your extra-large engulfing rabbit and looking straight at the camera. I never hope to have one so good. The only way I guess it could be any more literary is if the rabbit were smoking a Gauloise and drinking a tiny cup of coffee.
Patricia LockwoodHollywood, to hear some writers tell it, is the place where they take an author's steak tartare and make cheeseburger out of it. Upon seeing the film, they say, the author promptly cuts his throat, bleeding to death in a pool of money.
Fletcher KnebelIt is the shared experience - [although] you're the conduit of the sound, the recipient is also in some way the author of the work, because if they weren't the author of the work they wouldn't be able to recognise it as an experience, you could argue. The more distance you can put between yourself and having any kind of objective the more likely it is to appear.
Daniel O'SullivanAn author writes a book, and that's the book at that point. And if the author writes the book again, then somehow something has gone wrong, if you see what I mean.
Terry PratchettResults have nothing at all whatever to do with the private fun of being an author. There lies the answer to the problem which puzzles many wise people. Now it is plain why there are so many of us ... But the public fun of being an author is rather apt to wear thin.
J. E. BuckroseEvery author has different ways of writing and what works for one author does not necessarily work for another.
Robert MunschThe thing about being a mystery writer, what marks a mystery writer out from a chick lit author or historical fiction writer, is that you always find a mystery in every situation.
Tana FrenchWhen you do not recognize the wrongs of the past, the future takes its revenge. -Author forgotten
Ian C. EsslemontA Diogenesian search for an honest person would rarely lead to the author of a memoir.
Tony BlankleyPresident Roosevelt, the author of Social Security, was the first to suggest that, in order to provide for the country's retirement needs, Social Security would need to be supplemented by personal savings accounts.
John DoolittleIt has been remarked (by a lady infinitely cleverer than the present author) how kindly disposed the world in general feels to young people who either die or marry. Imagine then the interest that surrounded Miss Wintertowne! No young lady ever had such advantages before: for she died upon the Tuesday, was raised to life in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and was married upon the Thursday; which some people thought too much excitement for one week.
Susanna ClarkeThe success of many books is due to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public.
Nicolas ChamfortSometimes the reader will decide something else than the author's intent; this is certainly true of attempts to empirically decipher reality.
John M. FordThe Greeks used to use the same stories, the same mythology, time after time, different authors. There was no premium placed upon an original story, and indeed, Shakespeare likewise. A lot of people wrote plays about great kings. They didn't expect a brand-new story. It was what that new author made of the old story. It is probably the same now. We disguise it by inventing what seem to be new stories, but they're basically the same story anyway.
Arthur MillerI suppose I'd have to say that my favourite author is Homer. After Homer's Ilaid, I'd name The Odyssey, and then I'd mention a number of plays of Euripides.
William GoldingFundamentally a good author has his or her own sense of style. There is a natural, deep voice, and that voice is present from the first draft of a manuscript. When he or she elaborates on the initial manuscript, it continues to strengthen and simplify that natural, deep voice.
Kenzaburo OeMan is a transitory being, and his designs must partake of the imperfections of their author. To confer duration is not always in our power. We must snatch the present moment, and employ it well, without too much solicitude for the future, and content ourselves with reflecting that our part is performed. He that waits for an opportunity to do much at once, may breathe out his life in idle wishes, and regret, in the last hour, his useless intentions and barren zeal.
Samuel JohnsonI maintain that any writer of a book is fully authorised in attaching any meaning he likes to a word or phrase he intends to use. If I find an author saying, at the beginning of his book, "Let it be understood that by the word 'black' I shall always mean 'white,' and by the word 'white' I shall always mean 'black,'" I meekly accept his ruling, however injudicious I think it.
Lewis CarrollIn his laborious efforts to attain mountaintops, where the air is lighter and purer, the climber gains new strength of limb. In the endeavor to over come obstacles of the way, the soul trains itself to conquer difficulties; and the spectacle of the vast horizon, which from the highest crest offers itself on all sides to the eyes, raises his spirit to the Divine Author and Soverign of Nature.
Pope Pius XII'm mainly an airport author, and if you're trying to take your mind off the journey, you're not going to read 'King Lear.'
Maeve BinchyAs for the author, he is profoundly unaware of what the classical or romantic genre might consist of.... In literature, as in allthings, there is only the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the true and the false.
Victor HugoReaders will share in the environs of the author and her characters, be taken into the hardship of a pitiless place and emerge on the other side โ wiser, warier and weathered like the landscape.
Antonya NelsonThere are, indeed, few kinds of composition from which an author, however learned or ingenious, can hope a long continuance of fame.
Samuel JohnsonTo translate, one must have a style of his own, for the translation will have no rhythm or nuance, which come from the process of artistically thinking through and molding the sentences; they cannot be reconstituted by piecemeal imitation. The problem of translation is to retreat to a simpler tenor of oneโs own style and creatively adjust this to oneโs author.
Paul GoodmanThe art of reading is the art of adopting the pace the author has set. Some books are fast and some are slow, but no book can be understood if it is taken at the wrong speed.
Mark Van DorenFor the author there is nothing but his pen, till that and life are worn to the stump: and then, with good fortune, perhaps on his death-bed he receives a pension and equals, it may be, for a few months, the income of a retired butler!
Samuel Laman BlanchardPerpetual modernness is the measure of merit, in every work of art; since the author of it was not misled by anything short- livedor local, but abode by real and abiding traits.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThere were other Anti-Christs among the Nephites, but they were more military leaders than religious innovators... they are all of one breed and brand; so nearly alike that one mind is the author of them, and that a young and underdeveloped, but piously inclined mind. The evidence I sorrowfully submit, points to Joseph Smith as their creator. It is difficult to believe that they are a product of history, that they came upon the scene separated by long periods of time, and among a race which was the ancestral race of the red man of America.
B. H. RobertsI am a completely horizontal author. I can't think unless I'm lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch.
Truman CapoteAnyone buying this book is going to be out a tidy sum if he is sucked in by the title. I wish I could write a real sexy book that would be barred from the mails. Apparently nothing whets a reader's appetite for literature more than the news that the author has been thrown into a federal pokey for disturbing the libido of millions of Americans.
Groucho MarxA story of remarkable simplicity and charm. A young swimmer invites us into sea off the coast of California where through her eyes we see an entire realm of creatures we have never known so intimately before. Truly for people of all ages, Lynne Cox's adventure with the baby whale, Grayson, becomes a parable and an experience, thanks not only to the author's great and generous spirit, but through her immense gift for describing nature.
Anne RiceReading is a majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing can replace the exact, complicated, subtle communion between absent author and entranced, present reader.
Julian BarnesWhat does it mean to feel "in control" of your life? What I mean by control is the ability to make a choice. Personal sovereignty means that you choose from what is available in order to be intentional about your life...When you feel in control of your life, you know yourself to be the author of your own actions and know that you always have choices.
Polly Young-EisendrathYou need to take small steps when you dream big dreams. I am a published author with dyslexia, a professional speaker who was in speech therapy for three years as a child because I had a lisp; and a slow stiff kid from the suburbs who became an All-Pro in the NFL.
Karl MecklenburgSmile, breathe and go slowly." - Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Zen monk, author and peace activist.
Nhat HanhMy interest in science was excited at age nine by an article on astronomy in National Geographic; the author was Donald Menzel of the Harvard Observatory. For the next few years, I regularly made star maps and snuck out at night to make observations from a locust tree in our back yard.
Dudley R. Herschbach[T]he judicious reader ought to know what the chief character in any work of the imagination will naturally perform, according to the situation he is thrown into, as well as doth the author himself.
Sarah FieldingMany books in popular psychology are a melange of the author's comments, a dollop of research, and stupefyingly dull transcriptions from interviews.
Carol TavrisWe have a slate of four films. From Karen Young - the USA bestselling author - we have Blood Bayou. Again, we're relying on the story to tell itself and the characters tell it and not (relying on) shock value. It's a suspenseful drama...The best way I can describe it is Pelican Brief meets Time to Kill.
Drew WatersAn autobiography should give the reader opportunity to point out the author's follies and misconceptions.
Claud CockburnShakespeare is the true multicultural author. He exists in all languages. He is put on the stage everywhere. Everyone feels that they are represented by him on the stage.
Harold BloomThe Noonday Demon explores the subterranean realms of an illness which is on the point of becoming endemic, and which more than anything else mirrors the present state of our civilization and its profound discontents. As wide-ranging as it is incisive, this astonishing work is a testimony both to the muted suffering of millions and to the great courage it must have taken the author to set his mind against it.
W. G. Sebald