Quotes About Author

Whether the author intended a symbolic resonance to exist in her book is irrelevant. All that matters is whether it's there. Because the book does not exist for the benefit of the author, the book exists for the benefit of YOU. If we as readers can have a bigger and richer experience with the world as a result of reading a symbol and that symbol wasn't intended by the author, WE STILL WIN.

I do that a lot of authors still do not do is allow people to write directly to me. I get about 50 fan letters a day, and I answer every single one of them myself. It takes a lot of time and sometimes it's a pain in the neck and I answer the same questions over and over. But the truth is these people come to my readings clutching these letters saying, "You wrote me back. I can't believe you wrote me back", and I think it really means a lot for them to know that the author values them just as much as they value the author.

Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.

Christ is the Master; the Scriptures are only the servant. The true way to test all the Books is to see whether they work the will of Christ or not. No Book which does not preach Christ can be apostolic, though Peter or Paul were its author. And no Book which does preach Christ can fail to be apostolic, although Judas, Ananias, Pilate, or Herod were its author.

Reading a book should be a conversation between you and the author. Presumably he knows more about the subject than you do; if not, you probably should not be bothering with his book. But understanding is a two-way operation; the learner has to question himself and question the teacher, once he understands what the teacher is saying. Marking a book is literally an expression of your differences or your agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him.

My favorite anything is always relative to the context of present time, place and mood. When I finish a book and want to immediately find another by the same author and no other, that author is elevated to my favorite.

There is no obligation for the author of a film to believe in, or to sympathise with, the moral behaviour of his characters. Nor is he necessarily to be accredited with the same opinions as his characters. Nor is it necessary or obligatory for him to believe in the tenet of his construction - all of which is a disclaimer to the notion that the author of Drowning by Numbers believes that all men are weak, enfeebled, loutish, boorish and generally inadequate and incompetent as partners for women. But it's a thought.

I see God now as an unimaginative writer of popular fictions, someone who builds stories around sadistic and graceless plots, narratives that exist only to express His terror of a woman's power to choose who and how to love, to redefine love as she sees fit, not as God thinks it ought to be. The author is unworthy of His own characters.

When people read his books they have an uncontrollable desire to hang the author in the town square. I can’t think of a higher honor for a writer.

if an author would have us feel a strong degree of compassion, his characters must not be too perfect.

If modesty and candor are necessary to an author in his judgment of his own works, no less are they in his reader.

SATIRE, n. An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author's enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness.

If I want to be the sexy Bipasha Basu, then I'll do a song here or a glam role there. But I want to be part of films that are watched, films that earn money and are new age, with author-backed roles.

After two years of sending out query letters and failing to get an agent, I made friends with an author, who was nice enough to introduce me to his agent. That got my foot in the door.

Man 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.

When I know who is speaking, I see that there is a commitment. I need to know there is some commitment. I need to find an author. "I" can also be polyphonic, fictional, inhabited by a multitude of characters, be right or wrong or at fault or corrupted. But that's more "the self" than "me, me, me." It's problematic. There are times to say "we."

This is going to take a while. I'm a fantasy author. We have trouble with the concept of brevity.

Sweden is a small country, and a Swedish writer can barely make a living as an author. We were able to quit our jobs as journalists only after we had been translated into, among others, German.

He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.

The theater audience is the ultimate teacher, instructing the actor on the degree to which he has executed both the author's and the director's intent.

I'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.'

A brilliant author or businesswoman or senator or software engineer is brilliant only in tiny bursts. The rest of the time, they’re doing work that most any trained person could do.

Certainly the most diverse, if minor, pastime of literary life is the game of Find the Author.

My favorite figure of the American author is that of a man who breeds a favorite dog, which he throws into the Mississippi River for the pleasure of making a splash. The river does not splash, but it drowns the dog.

Some books seem to have been written, not to teach us anything, but to let us know that the author has known something.

The selection of topics for intensive research has often been a function of serendipitous opportunity. My forays into philosophy of education were largely in response to the prompting of friends and my dissatisfaction with much of what - at that time - passed for philosophy of education. I cannot honestly say that there has been either continuity or an overarching schema, though I suspect ,or at least hope, that someone who looked at my oeuvre might conclude that there was a philosophically integrated author.

I don't think that you can be prescriptive about anything, I mean, life is too complicated. Maybe there are novels where the author has not in the least thought about it in terms of film, which can be turned into good films.

No author ever spar'd a brother.

Life 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.

I would go fifty miles on foot to kiss the hand of that man whose generous heart will give up the reins of his imagination into his Author's hands; be pleased, he knows not why, and cares not wherefore.

Anthony Heilbut has been a guide and a mentor to me. I know of no one who has the love and depth of knowledge of this extraordinary author.

I 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.

I 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.

Every reader, if he has a strong mind, reads himself into the book, and amalgamates his thoughts with those of the author.

Beware of books. They are more than innocent assemblages of paper and ink and string and glue. If they are any good, they have the spirit of the author within. Authors are rogues and ruffians and easy lays. They are gluttons for sweets and savories. They devour life and always want more. They have sap, spirit, sex. Books are panderers. The Jews are not wrong to worship books. A real book has pheromones and sprouts grass through its cover.

When you read a piece of writing that you admire, send a note of thanks to the author.

God is the foundation of all authority, He exercises that foundation because He is the author and the owner of His creation. He is the foundation upon which all other authority stands or falls.

To want to meet an author because you like his books is as ridiculous as wanting to meet the goose because you like pate de foie gras.

One that actually relates to all Latin American literature: that is, not every author is interested in being a representative of his or her national culture on the global stage.

How can a good God appoint cruel people to positions of authority? The answer is simple: God is the originator of the authority, but He is not the author of the cruelty. Man is responsible for his cruel actions, not God. All authority is of God, but not all authority is godly.

My first experience of having a baby was about as natural as birth can be, and though I didn't know it at the time, it set my feet on a path that eventually led me to become a childbirth author and a midwife.

My office walls are covered with autographs of famous writers - it's what my children call my 'dead author wall.' I have signatures from Mark Twain, Earnest Hemingway, Jack London, Harriett Beecher Stowe, Pearl Buck, Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, to name a few.

No one likes to feel helpless. We find it psychologically unbearable and inside ourselves we may try to make ourselves part author of our misfortune rather than simply the recipient of it.

It 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.

As a journalist, I would talk to writers, directors, creative people, and discover that for an awful lot of them, the moment they became successful, that was all they were allowed to do. So you end up talking to the bestselling science-fiction author who wrote a historical-fiction novel that everybody loved, but no one would publish.

How many authors are there among writers? Author means originator.

Men are impatient, and for precipitating things; but the Author of Nature appears deliberate throughout His operations, accomplishing His natural ends by slow, successive steps. And there is a plan of things beforehand laid out, which, from the nature of it, requires various systems of means, as well as length of time, in order to the carrying on its several parts into execution.

This fear is one of the horrors of an author's life. Where does work come from? What chance, what small episode will start the chain of creation? I once wrote a story about a writer who could not write anymore, and my friend Tennessee Williams said, 'How could you dare write that story, it's the most frightening work I have ever read.' I was pretty well sunk while I was writing it.