Popular quotes about Author! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 17
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.
John GreenI 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 GilmoreWhen it comes to memoir, we want to catch the author in a lie. When we read fiction, we want to catch the author telling the truth.
Tayari JonesThe stories I love the most are where the author has a lot of empathy for everyone. The author loves their characters and takes their situations really seriously, and you feel like you're just dropped into a different world.
Molly AntopolNobody is the author or producer of his own life story ... somebody began it and is its subject in the twofold sense, namely, its actor and sufferer ... but nobody is the author.
Hannah ArendtThe history of this paper suggests that highly speculative investigations, especially by an unknown author, are best brought before the world through some other channel than a scientific society, which naturally hesitates to admit into its printed records matters of uncertain value. Perhaps one may go further and say that a young author who believes himself capable of great things would usually do well to secure the favourable recognition of the scientific world by work whose scope is limited and whose value is easily judged, before embarking upon higher flights.
John William Strutt[D]on't ever apologize to an author for buying something in paperback, or taking it out from a library (that's what they're there for. Use your library). Don't apologize to this author for buying books second hand, or getting them from bookcrossing or borrowing a friend's copy. What's important to me is that people read the books and enjoy them, and that, at some point in there, the book was bought by someone. And that people who like things, tell other people. The most important thing is that people read.
Neil GaimanI have been told by hospital authorities that more copies of my works are left behind by departing patients than those of any other author.
Robert BenchleyI 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 ZettelAgainst the censurers of brevity. - Something said briefly can be the fruit of much long thought: but the reader who is a novice in this field, and has as yet reflected on it not at all, sees in everything said briefly something embryonic, not without censuring the author for having served him up such immature and unripened fare.
Friedrich NietzscheI have been luckier than anyone I know or even heard of. I had a very happy childhood, a good education, I enjoyed working as a teacher, journalist and author. I have loved a wonderful man for over 33 years, and I believe he loves me, too.
Maeve BinchyThe books we enjoy as children stay with us forever -- they have a special impact. Paragraph after paragraph and page after page, the author must deliver his or her best work.
Sid FleischmanAs a writer, author, creator of something the fact that people are still interested, is fantastic.
Phil CollinsIf 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 SchopenhauerSometimes the reader will decide something else than the author's intent; this is certainly true of attempts to empirically decipher reality.
John M. FordI always point people to the article '1,000 True Fans' by Kevin Kelly. If you choose your thousand ideal customers or readers properly and find the single author blog that targets that audience, you never have to do any more marketing. You're done. That is a lesson that very few product developers and marketers have learned, and it's unfortunate.
Tim FerrissIf 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.
Bipasha BasuMan 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 CarrollAs a writer, its important to stay true to your story without giving a hoot about publishers, critics and readers. You should do your karma as an author the way you want to, and rest is up to God.
Amish TripathiIn January 1962, when I was the author of one and a half unperformed plays, I attended a student production of 'The Birthday Party' at the Victoria Rooms in Bristol. Just before it began, I realised that Harold Pinter was sitting in front of me.
Tom StoppardSweden 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.
Maj SjowallWe read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.
John KeatsBelieve in yourself and in your own voice, because there will be times in this business when you will be the only one who does. Take heart from the knowledge that an author with a strong voice will often have trouble at the start of his or her career because strong,distinctive voices sometimes make editors nervous. But in the end, only the strong survive.
Jayne Ann KrentzWill we listen to Satan, the author of all lies โฆ ? Or are we going to believe a loving Heavenly Father, who is the source of all truth and happiness?
Richard C. EdgleyFor love is of God. He is the fountain, author, parent, and commander of love; it is the sum of his law and gospel.
Matthew HenryThe 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 ArmintroutI am a completely horizontal author. I can't think unless I'm lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch.
Truman CapoteFor until men recognize that they owe everything to God, that they are nourished by His fatherly care, that He is the Author of their every good, that they should seek nothing beyond Him - they will never yield Him willing service. Nay, unless they establish their complete happiness in Him, they will never give themselves truly and sincerely to Him.
John CalvinFor the last six weeks I have found myself pestered by some characters in search of an author.
Sylvia Townsend WarnerA 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 RiceI 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 a great foe of favoritism in public life, in private life, and even in the delicate relationship of an author to his works.
Joseph ConradIs it not superfluous to write more than one novel if the writer has not become, say, a new man? Obviously, all the novels of an author not infrequently belong together and are to a certain degree only one novel.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich SchlegelIf you cannot judge a book by its cover, surely we should not judge an author by one book alone?
E. A. BucchianeriIt is difficult to get men to pick up a female author. Women will read men, but men won't read women.
Lisa GardnerHis contempt for humanity grew fiercer, and at last he came to realize that the world is made up mostly of fools and scoundrels. It became perfectly clear to him that he could entertain no hope of finding in someone else the same aspirations and antipathies; no hope of linking up with a mind which, like his own, took pleasure in a life of studious decrepitude; no hope of associating an intelligence as sharp and wayward as his own with any author or scholar.
Joris-Karl HuysmansA 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 SmithAnd when he [the author of the universe] had compounded the whole, he divided it up into as many souls as there are stars, and allotted each soul to a star. And mounting them on their stars, as if on chariots, he showed them the nature of the universe and told them the laws of their destiny. - "Timaeus" by Plato 427-347 B.C.
Wendy MassI do tend to look at my books in many ways as conceptual fiction, even to the point where I think the author's photograph is part of the package. And I have gone out of my way to select the photograph to connect to the subject matter of each book.
Bret Easton EllisThe author O. Henry taught me about the value of the unexpected. He once wrote about the noise of flowers and the smell of birdsโthe birds were chickens and the flowers dried sunflowers rattling against a wall.
Chuck JonesWith 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 Halberstam