Popular quotes about Author! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
I know publishing now more as an author than with occasional peaks inside those elite offices than as an industry insider. It was difficult publishing a novel the first time around, while working behind the scenes, knowing all that has to happen to make a book a success and to still make the leap as an author.
Jennifer GilmoreI 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 AubynAn 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 PratchettMore than anything I am a novelist. But for me, an author's job is not only to create linguistically accomplished works. As an author I also want to stimulate discussion.
Orhan PamukThe art path leads you to be increasingly free. And what does "because of being increasingly free" mean? Julio Ramรณn Ribeyro used to say a mature novel demands the author's death, not literal death but metaphoric death, which is the author has to truly erase himself. Therefore, to be truly free, you have to break free from internal and external pressures, to erase the self completely and become a sort of medium, let the story pass through yourself and let the story dance with you.
Rosa MonteroThe Author is subtly unflinching in its satirical attack on certain practices in the creation of art and the mediation of violence.
Tim CrouchIt 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 ClarkeIf at times I have thought myself unfortunate, it is because of a confusion, an error. I have mistaken myself for someone else... Who am I really? I am the author of The World as Will and Representation, I am the one who has given an answer to the mystery of Being that will occupy the thinkers of future centuries. That is what I am, and who can dispute it in the years of life that still remain for me?
Arthur SchopenhauerIt seems to me as I reviewed the literature that, with few exceptions, the more confident were the prescriptions about how to behave with ethics and integrity, the further removed was the author from the life and work of the everyday manager.
Steve KerrIf modesty and candor are necessary to an author in his judgment of his own works, no less are they in his reader.
Sarah FieldingI 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 GoldingI was obsessed with fairytales, and I was a very, very inquisitive kid, and I would ask my mom all kinds of questions. It all kind of formed a story in my head, and I really wanted to be a published author when I was 10, but I had a hard time writing a novel when I was 10. So I decided to wait until I was little bit older and then get it done.
Chris ColferAn author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.
Baron de MontesquieuI've been astonished how often, when I convince a writer to tell a story more straightforwardly and to tell it more simply and directly, it turns out that this author is great and the story is wonderful.
Alice MattisonIn 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 really believe that readers are smart and sophisticated enough to realize that the author is not the narrator of his novels.
Bret Easton EllisThose who are seeking the true religion will never find it outside the Catholic Church alone, because, in every other religion, if they trace it up to the author, they will find some impostor whose imagination furnished a mass of sophisms and errors
Alphonsus LiguoriI started Storyline after I'd accomplished all my goals and still wasn't happy. I'd become a New York Times bestselling author, which was my goal from high school, and yet I was less happy after accomplishing my goals than I was before.
Donald MillerI am so in favor of the actual infinite that instead of admitting that Nature abhors it, as is commonly said, I hold that Nature makes frequent use of it everywhere, in order to show more effectively the perfections of its Author. Thus I believe that there is no part of matter which is not - I do not say divisible - but actually divisible; and consequently the least particle ought to be considered as a world full of an infinity of different creatures.
Georg CantorMy theory on literature is an author who does not indulge in trashiness-writes about people you could introduce into your own home...he did not care to read a book or go to a play about people he would not care to meet at his own dinner table. I believe we should live by certain standards and ideals.
Booth TarkingtonA brilliant author or businesswoman or senator or software engineer is brilliant only in tiny bursts. The rest of the time, theyโre doing work that most any trained person could do.
Seth GodinCertainly the most diverse, if minor, pastime of literary life is the game of Find the Author.
Arthur MillerThe way a book is read, which is to say, the qualities a reader brings to a book can have as much to do with its worth as anything the author puts into it.
Norman CousinsLife takes its own turns, makes its own demands, writes its own story, and along the way, we start to realize we are not the author.
Barack ObamaBeing a Georgia author is a rather specious dignity, on the same order as, for the pig, being a Talmadge ham.
Flannery O'ConnorYou 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 MecklenburgI couldn't really experience being an author when I was still working in publishing - I was trying to negotiate being both. Sometimes the knowledge doesn't translate between the two roles.
Jennifer GilmoreI am sure that no traveler seeing things through author spectacles can see them as they are.
Harriet MartineauI no longer know the author of this book, for simply stopping long enough and writing it down was where I changed from a boy with his eyes squeezed shut to a man with his eyes wide open so that the sunlight might reach my heart despite all that darkness.
Ryan AdamsIt is difficult to get men to pick up a female author. Women will read men, but men won't read women.
Lisa GardnerCrushed to earth and rising again is an author's gymnastic. Once he fails to struggle to his feet and grab his pen, he will contemplate a fact he should never permit himself to face: that in all probability books have been written, are being written, will be written, better than anything he has done, is doing, or will do.
Fannie HurstIn the theatre, the actor is in total control. The director wasn't in the house last night, the designer wasn't there, the author's dead. It's just us and the audience.
Ian MckellenIt doesn't bother me. Sure, everybody wants approval, but I came from the theatre and I've always treasured a remark from there which goes: 'For every six people who love you, there will be half a dozen who loathe you.' The quality of an author's work is not usually determined until after his death. Even Dickens got some pretty bad reviews.
Robert LudlumIt is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all that he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his readers is sure to skip them.
John RuskinI did about 2000 covers altogether, for all sorts of books - from Shakespeare to James Bond - and I always had the idea that I must give 100%, no matter who the author was.
Dick BrunaA little more than a hundred years ago, "Tel Aviv" was not a city. It was a title of a novel written by an author. The "Return to Zion" was a name of another novel. There was a bookshelf. There was no country. There was no state. There was no nation. There was no physical Jewish reality in this country.
Amos OzWith a novel, which takes perhaps years to write, the author is not the same man he was at the end of the book as he was at the beginning. It is not only that his characters have developed-he has developed with them, and this nearly always gives a sense of roughness to the work: a novel can seldom have the sense of perfection which you find in Chekhov's story, The Lady with the Dog.
Graham GreeneFools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.
VoltairePeople who think they know what is going to happen next are fools. Surprises - or what the brilliant author Nassim Taleb calls 'Black Swans' - are inevitable. Some are likely to be desperately unpleasant too
Martin WolfAn actor's job is about putting across the author's intention; I don't think of myself on the same level as a creator.
Jane AsherThere are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake. ... The truth is that when an author begins to write for the sake of covering paper, he is cheating the reader; because he writes under the pretext that he has something to say.
Arthur SchopenhauerAt what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
Abraham LincolnI often envy a filmmaker or a playwright or an author where people are like, "Yeah, I sat down every night and read your book and it was beautiful." Or, "Yeah, I went to the movies and all I did was watch the movie because that's all you could do at the movies." Where with music, it's like, "Ugh, I love your music. I listen to it while I'm jogging thinking about how I hate my body." But it is also the privilege of being a musician is you can have your music in this documented form and play it live and that's, I think, what draws me to it the most.
Dan DeaconSanity and enlightenment...I've been reading a new book Dogen's Genjo Koan: Three Commentaries, and it contains a commentary on Genjo Koan by Shunryu Suzuki, the author who wrote Zen Mind, Beginners Mind. He doesn't mention sanity at all but I think that one possible definition of enlightenment would be a kind of profound sanity, where being insane is no longer an option.
Brad Warner