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.

One hates an author that's all author.

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.

It has been the error of the schools to teach astronomy, and all the other sciences, and subjects of natural philosophy, as accomplishments only; whereas they should be taught theologically, or with reference to the Being who is the author of them: for all the principles of science are of divine origin. Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles: he can only discover them; and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author.

To ask an author who hopes to be a serious writer if his work is autobiographical is like asking a spider where he buys his thread. The spider gets his thread right out of his own guts, and that is where the author gets his writing.

Against 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.

The dimensions of a work of art are seldom realized by the author until the work is accomplished. It is like a flowering dream. Ideas grow, budding silently, and there are a thousand illuminations coming day by day as the work progresses. A seed grows in writing as in nature. The seed of the idea is developed by both labor and the unconscious, and the struggle that goes on between them.

The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise.

Some people connect with a story and may find between the lines something that might be useful to him or her, but that's not the intention of the author, I think. At least not mine.

Becoming a YA author was actually a very lucky accident. When I wrote the Queen of Everything, I thought it was a book for adults.

The cookbooks I value the most in my collection are the ones where you hear the author's voice and point-of-view in every recipe.

Because I'm the author of my screenplays I know what I'm looking for. It's true that I can be stubborn in demanding that I get what I want, but it's also a question of working with patience and love.

A book becomes a mirror, with the author's face shining over it. Talent only gives an imperfect image,--the broken glimmer of a countenance. But the features of genius remain unruffled. Time guards the shadow. Beauty, the spiritual, Venus,--whose children are the Tassos, the Spensers, the Bacons,--breathes, the magic of her love, and fixes the face forever.

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.

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.

I often encountered books by academics and others who had not actually done what they had written about. They tend to create artificial simplicity; their prose doesn't have the vigor of "lived words." On the other hand, many practitioners lack the context or introspection to make their experiences and understandings transferable - and, in our time, many don't actually write the books they "author." My ideal is to unify theory and practice.

While every new fantasy author is hailed as unique, new, and different, Brandon Sanderson's ELANTRIS does indeed provide an absorbing adventure in a unique, different, and well-thought-out fantasy world, with a few nifty twists as well.

There isn’t any particular relationship between the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.

My favorite author's question of all time - because it's so simple to answer ... 'Is your hair really like that, or do you get it done?

I 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.

Haiku is a particularly Zen form of poetry; for Zen detests egoism in the form of calculated effects or self-glorification of any sort. The author of haiku should be absent, and only the haiku present.

Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing can replace the exact, complicated, subtle communion between absent author and entranced, present reader.

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 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.

We often forget that the author of our faith must be the finisher of it also.

[T]he judicious reader ought to know what the chief character in any work of the imagination will naturally perform, according to the situation he is thrown into, as well as doth the author himself.

I don't doubt that God can bring good out of tragedies, but the Bible is clear that God is not the author of evil!

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.

Many books in popular psychology are a melange of the author's comments, a dollop of research, and stupefyingly dull transcriptions from interviews.

The author O. Henry taught me about the value of the unexpected. He once wrote about the noise of flowers and the smell of birds—the birds were chickens and the flowers dried sunflowers rattling against a wall.

Even the most elitist director or author who claims that he doesn't care if his works are seen or not, then I have to think that he's either a liar or a hypocrite.

A 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.

The author always loads his dice, but he must never let the reader see that he has done so, and by the manipulation of his plot, he can engage the reader's attention so that he does not perceive the violence that has been done to him.

Leaders use story to author the future.

Is it easy to love God' asks an old author. 'It is easy,' he replies, 'to those who do it.' I have included two Graces under the word Charity. But God can give a third. He can awake in man, towards Himself, a supernatural Appreciative love. This is of all gifts the most to be desired. Here, not in our natural loves, nor even in ethics, lies the true centre of all human and angelic life. With this all things are possible.

What’s strange is how many beginning writers seem to think that grammar is irrelevant, or that they are somehow above or beyond this subject more fit for a schoolchild than the future author of great literature.

Sanity 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.

A presentation copy, reader,-if haply you are yet innocent of such favours-is a copy of a book which does not sell, sent you by the author.

I think it's always good for the author to stay a good cattle prod's distance from the actual moviemaking.

The translator of prose is the slave of the author, and the translator of poetry is his rival.

I 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.

Nabokov quote: "I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child."

In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. This affirmation lies in the way the author takes control of reality by retelling it in his own way, thus creating a new world. Every great work of art, I would declare pompously, is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors and infidelities of life. The perfection and beauty of form rebels against the ugliness and shabbiness of the subject matter.

Some people probably think of the Resurrection as a desperate last moment expedient to save the Hero from a situation which had got out of the Author's control.

I never wanted to be an author or thought I could be.

No Man has a more perfect reliance on the all-wise and powerful dispensations of the Supreme Being than I have, nor thinks his aid more necessary...The man must be bad indeed who can look upon the events of the American Revolution without feeling the warmest gratitude towards the great Author of the Universe whose divine interposition was so frequently manifested in our behalf....In war He directed the sword, and in peace, He has ruled in our councils.