Popular quotes about Author! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 17
If you don't put 99 percent of yourself into the writing, there will be no publishing career. There's the writer and there's the author. The author - you don't ever think about the author. Just think about the writer. So my advice would be, find a way to not care - easier said than done.
Andre DubusWhether 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.
John GreenI think overtly political novels - those that never transcend or contest their author's conscious intentions and prejudices - are problematic. This is not just true of the innumerable unread books in the socialist realist tradition, but also of novels that carry the burden of conservative ideologies, like Guerrillas, Naipaul's worst book, where the author's disgust for a certain kind of black activist and white liberal is overpowering.
Pankaj MishraThe 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 HugoI 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 AubynI wanted to be an author as far back as I can remember, mixed with occasional bouts of wanting to be a werewolf when I grew up. But mostly, when I daydreamed, it was about being an author.
Neil GaimanPoets can tell the truth as they see it. Itโs the authorโs story, the authorโs voice.
Nikki GiovanniMy role is to promote the authors image and their new books. I'm also brought on board when the author is "between books" to keep the name in front of the reading public. That's a challenging time for an author.
Tom RobinsonHollywood, 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 KnebelFiction should be about moral dilemmas that are so bloody difficult that the author doesn't know the answer. What I hate in fiction is when the author knows better than the characters what they should do.
Pat BarkerIf someone writes a great story, people praise the author, not the pen. People don't say, 'Oh what an incredible pen...where can I get a pen like this so I can write great stories?' Well, I am just a pen in the hands of the Lord. He is the author. All praise should go to him.
Keith GreenResults 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. BuckroseThere are many readers of the book, who don't know anything about the authors and the artists. There is more than one author. It doesn't matter, if you can't make the reader dive into the story and surround him with that environment and those characters. That's an experience that lasts longer than figuring out who did what. I think that's what makes our working relationship better, it helps us to make a book that feels unique and not like different voices.
Gabriel BaLike Sylvia Plath, Natalie Jeanne Champagne invites you so close to the pain and agony of her life of mental illness and addiction, which leaves you gasping from shock and laughing moments later: this is both the beauty and unique nature of her storytelling. With brilliance and courage, the author's brave and candid chronicle travels where no other memoir about mental illness and addiction has gone before. The Third Sunrise is an incredible triumph and Natalie Jeanne Champagne is without a doubt the most important new voice in this genre.
Andy BehrmanThe style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise.
Edward GibbonWe read privately, mentally listening to the author's voice and translating the writer's thoughts. The book remains static and fixed; the reader journeys through it.
Lynne TrussAmendments occupy a great deal of most legislators' time, particularly those lawmakers in the minority. Members of Congress do author major bills, but more commonly they make minor adjustments to the bigger bill.
Matt TaibbiThe 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 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 ColferThe author's mentor advises the NAKED method of breaking the ice at the first meeting: Name, Address, Kin, Experience, and Dreams.
Kevin RooseI 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 CarrollAll worthy work is open to interpretations the author did not intend. Art isn't your pet -- it's your kid. It grows up and talks back to you.
Joss WhedonYou know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.
W. Somerset MaughamWe read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.
John KeatsAnita Johnston, Ph.D., author of Eating in the Light of the Moon, taught me to look in the mirror with curiosity rather than fear. So I may look at my reflection and think, 'That's interesting. I wonder why my body seems bigger today than it did yesterday. Maybe it's water weight. Maybe it's my outfit. Or maybe my eyes are just playing tricks on me.' I know it's not possible for me to gain a noticeable amount of weight overnight, so I will go no further than that. I move on with my day without skipping a beat-and definitely without missing a meal.
Jenni SchaeferTo 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 GoodmanThere was an author who titled his books by days of the weeks and another one that used colors. Then there was Edward Gorey who wrote the book The Gashlycrumb Tinies, about the untimely death of 26 Victorian children, each representing a letter of the alphabet. I thought what a great way to link the titles.
Sue GraftonThe attitude of, I will never self-publish, coming from any author, indicates that they have never been in a position where it is their only option.
Jennifer ArmintroutIf I had an author superpower, I would like to have the ability to stop time for everyone else. I feel like I have to disappear into myself to write books. I go away, into my head, for hours and weeks at a time, and I hate that I miss everything. It's pretty selfish to want to pause other people, isn't it?
Rainbow RowellI was shocked at college to see one hundred of my classmates in the library all reading copies of the same book. Instead of doing as they did, I went into the stacks and read the first book written by an author whose name began with Z. I received the highest grade in the class. That convinced me that the institution was not being run correctly. I left.
John CageSome books seem to have been written, not to teach us anything, but to let us know that the author has known something.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheI 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.
Paul AusterI always give books. And I always ask for books. I think you should reward people sexually for getting you books. Don't send a thank-you note, repay them with sexual activity. If the book is rare or by your favorite author or one you didn't know about, reward them with the most perverted sex act you can think of. Otherwise, you can just make out.
John WatersIf I become the most popular author in jump, please give me the right to end one manga I hate.
Tsugumi OhbaMy 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. HerschbachIn writing the history of a disease, every philosophical hypothesis whatsoever, that has previously occupied the mind of the author, should lie in abeyance.
Thomas SydenhamAn author accepting language's invitation to dance steps onto the floor of his her sensibility-charged consciousness and begins to move instinctively--even if with much dread--in ways that synchronize images, ideas, emotions, sounds, smells, ignorance, and knowledge.
AberjhaniThe two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.
William Makepeace ThackerayToo large a proportion of recent "mathematical" economics are mere concoctions, as imprecise as the initial assumptions they rest on, which allow the author to lose sight of the complexities and interdependencies of the real world in a maze of pretentious and unhelpful symbols.
John Maynard KeynesSome people don't think that what I do is art - but for me art exists by definition. The beautiful and most liberating thing about being an artist is the ability to say that what I make is art. Art exists because the author says so.
Paul Rusconi