Popular quotes about Author! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 12
I have never admitted the right of an elderly author to alter the work of a young author, even when the young author happens to be his former self.
George Bernard ShawDo not place a photograph of your favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.
Roddy DoyleThe author creates a book and the people accept or not accept it. The creator of a book is an author and the creator of it`s fate are people.
Victor HugoIt is (to describe it figuratively) as if an author were to make a slip of the pen, and as if this clerical error became conscious of being such. Perhaps this was no error but in a far higher sense was an essential part of the whole exposition. It is, then, as if this clerical error were to revolt against the author, out of hatred for him, were to forbid him to correct it, and were to say, "No, I will not be erased, I will stand as a witness against thee, that thou art a very poor writer."
Soren KierkegaardIf you feel that there's the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of identifying the author with the narrator, and you can't, obviously, be all of the narrators in all of your books, or else you'd be a very strange person indeed.
Margaret AtwoodA reader is doubly guilty of bad manners against an author when he praises his second book at the expense of his first (or vice versa) and then expects the author to be grateful for what he has done.
Friedrich NietzscheIf the poem can be improved by the author's explanations, it never should have been published.
Archibald MacLeishI think people enjoy a series. When you like a story, many readers want more of the same, which is dandy, if the author and the characters have more to say.
Sarah ZettelIt 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 ClarkeA critic is never too severe when he only detects the faults of an author. But he is worse than too severe when, in consequence of this detection, be presumes to place himself on a level with genius.
Walter Savage LandorIt 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 KerrSometimes the reader will decide something else than the author's intent; this is certainly true of attempts to empirically decipher reality.
John M. FordMan 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 JohnsonThe act of reading is a partnership. The author builds a house, but the reader makes it a home.
Jodi PicoultI really believe that readers are smart and sophisticated enough to realize that the author is not the narrator of his novels.
Bret Easton EllisListen closely. Thereโs a remote possibility that you might learn something: First, I donโt give a damn if my work is commercial or notโฆIโm the writer. If what I write is good, then people will read it. Thatโs why literature exists. An author puts his heart and guts on the page. For your information, a good novel can change the world. Keep that in mind before you attempt to sit down at a typewriter. Never waste time on something you donโt believe in yourself.
John FanteReaders 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 JohnsonThe task of an author is, either to teach what is not known, or to recommend known truths by his manner of adorning them; either to let new light in upon the mind, and open new scenes to the prospect, or to vary the dress and situation of common objects, so as to give them fresh grace and more powerful attractions, to spread such flowers over the regions through which the intellect has already made its progress, as may tempt it to return, and take a second view of things hastily passed over, or negligently regarded.
Samuel JohnsonIf I focused hard on getting a literary agent, and doing things like that, instead of designing my blog's header, I would have more money, I think. I think I don't view myself as an author. I view myself as a person. I view [anything] as part of being a person, so I feel okay with "marketing" or other things like that.
Tao LinThen I found another one, grandpa's poem. It turned out it had been written by Emily Brontรซ and it wasn't my grandfather's poem at all, although my response to it, I think, was pretty much the same, I just had the author wrong.
Edward HirschThe fact is that the intrinsic worth of the book, play or whatever the author is trying to sell is the least, last factor in the the whole transaction.
George Bernard ShawThe same common sense which makes an author write good things, makes him dread they are not good enough to deserve reading.
Jean de la BruyereA good edit process turns rocks into diamonds, and every author should love that part as much as the creative phase. I do love it. It's a different side to writing. It's like the fine-tuning.
Kim SmithI have always wanted to be a published author. I write baseball books because I love the sport.
Jonathan WeeksWith the marketing pressures driving the book world today, it's much easier to get the author of a memoir on a television show than a serious novelist.
David HalberstamA classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.
Edith WhartonI never met an author who admitted that people did not buy his book because it was dull.
W. Somerset MaughamFinally, Everybody Hates Chris is on, isn't that right Alice?? Plus, I dont know why they say to put author name for a stinkin' quote.
Erin HunterBurns had his faults, his frailties. He was intensely human. Still, I would rather appear at the "Judgment Seat" drunk, and be able to say that I was the author of "A man's a man for 'a that," than to be perfectly sober and admit that I had lived and died a Scotch Presbyterian.
Robert Green IngersollAfter an author has been dead for some time, it becomes increasingly difficult for his publishers to get out a new book by him each year.
Robert BenchleyNo matter how successful, beloved, influential her work was, when a woman author dies, nine times out of ten, she gets dropped from the lists, the courses, the anthologies, while the men get kept. ... If she had the nerve to have children, her chances of getting dropped are higher still. ... So if you want your writing to be taken seriously, don't marry and have kids, and above all, don't die. But if you have to die, commit suicide. They approve of that.
Ursula K. Le GuinIt's really a misconception to identify the writer with the main character, given that the author creates all the characters in the book. In certain ways, I'm every character.
Rachel KushnerIn every principle presented to us, our first inquiry should be, "Is it true?" "Does it emanate from God?" If he is its Author it can be sustained just as much as any other truth in natural philosophy; if false it should be opposed and exposed just as much as any other error.
John TaylorIn preparing the present volume, it has been the aim of the author to do full justice to the ample material at his command, and, where possible, to make the illustrations tell the main story to anatomists. The text of such a memoir may soon lose its interest, and belong to the past, but good figures are of permanent value. [Justifying elaborate illustrations in his monographs.]
Othniel Charles MarshMan is clearly made to think. It is his whole dignity and his whole merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. And the order of thought is to begin with ourselves, and with our Author and our end.
Blaise PascalThe sensible author writes for no other posterity than his own--that is, for his age--so as to be able even then to take pleasurein himself.
Friedrich NietzscheThis practice of adoration is based on strong and solid reasons. For the Eucharist is at once a sacrifice and a sacrament; but it differs from the other sacraments in that it not only produces grace, but contains in a permanent manner the Author of Grace Himself. When, therefore, the Church bids us to adore Christ hidden behind the Eucharistic veils and to pray to Him for spiritual and temporal favors, of which we ever stand in need, she manifests faith in her divine Spouse who is present beneath these veils, she professes her gratitude to Him, and she enjoys the intimacy of His friendship
Pope Pius XIIIn books we never find anything but ourselves. Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure, and we say the author is a genius.
Thomas MannFor God to be holy does not just mean He is without error. It means He is without equal. May it not be said of any one of us that there is not respect for the author of the universe. He is sovereign over all nature, over all nations and over every single one of our lives.
David PlattI'm a pluralist about perspectives on literature. There seem to me to be all sorts of illuminating ways of responding to major literary works, some of them paying considerable attention to context, others applying various theoretical ideas, yet others focusing on details of language, or linking the work to the author's life, or connecting it with other works.
Philip KitcherI always feel that as the author, once I know what a character is ashamed of, then I can go about making her truthful on the page.
Joshua MohrIt is important to insist on the historical truthfulness of the narrative of the fall of Adam and Eve. Just as the account of the creation of Adam and Eve is tied in with the rest of the historical narrative in the book of Genesis, so also this account of the fall of man, which follows the history of man's creation, is presented by the author as straightforward, narrative history
Wayne Grudem