Quotes About Authors

At first critics classified authors as Ancients, that is to say, Greek and Latin authors, and Moderns, that is to say, every post-Classical Author. Then they classified them by eras, the Augustans, the Victorians, etc., and now they classify them by decades, the writers of the '30's, '40's, etc. Very soon, it seems, they will be labeling authors, like automobiles, by the year.

Authors also create lovable, friendly characters, then proceed to do terrible things to them, like throw them in unsightly librarian-controlled dungeons. This makes readers feel hurt and worried for the characters. The simple truth is that authors like making people squirm. If this weren't the case, all novels would be filled completely with cute bunnies having birthday parties.

I always encourage authors (especially new authors) to be as generous as we are blessed. For one thing, it is a way to help people. For another, it is a seed one is planting for the life of the book. Someone gave it to someone who gave it to someone else.

There 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.

None save great men have been the authors of great heresies.

I would give them (aspiring writers) the oldest advice in the craft: Read and write. Read a lot. Read new authors and established ones, read people whose work is in the same vein as yours and those whose genre is totally different. You've heard of chain-smokers. Writers, especially beginners, need to be chain-readers. And lastly, write every day. Write about things that get under your skin and keep you up at night.

We must be authors of the history of our age.

Some authors have conceptualized depression as a "depletion syndrome" because of the prominence of fatigability; they postulate that the patient exhausts his available energy during the period prior to the onset of the depression and that the depressed state represents a kind of hibernation, during which the patient gradually builds up a new story of energy.

I grew up with probably three different authors having a seminal influence on my childhood, Dr. Seuss being one and Maurice Sendak being another. That was my parents, who exposed me to their stories. That's how I was introduced to the whole idea of not just reading, but storytelling in general.

I would say that most of my books are contemporary realistic fiction... a couple, maybe three, fall into the 'historic fiction' category. Science fiction is not a favorite genre of mine, though I have greatly enjoyed some of the work of Ursula LeGuin. I haven't read much science fiction so I don't know other sci-fi authors.

If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all — except the censor. We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty.

Exploring Ecclesiology is true to its subtitle, being both vibrantly evangelical and admirably ecumenical; it is commendable for its depth, breadth, and erudition. Harper and Metzger's sympathetic engagement with Catholic ecclesiology is challenging and reciprocal. I especially appreciate how the authors emphasize and explore the vital connection between ecclesiology and eschatology, something very beneficial to readers seeking to better appreciate how living the Faith in community today relates to the hope of entering fully into Trinitarian communion in the life to come.

I'd like the reader to decide if he is willing to pay minute sums for content. I'd like the economics of web to be controlled between authors and readers, not advertiser.

Silicon Valley isn't usually where aspiring authors go to kick-start a literary reputation. [...] How'd he do it? By courting bloggers and influential techies like Joi Ito, Stewart Brand, and Craig Newmark demonstrating that if you can get the geek grapevine on your side, you don't need Random House.

For almost half a century, Fermilab has occupied center stage as physicists have sought to understand the fundamental structure of the universe. The lab deserves a good history, and I'm happy to say that in this book it has one. The authors present a compelling, nuanced, and richly detailed account of the place from its beginnings to the present.

As other authors have realized, heat can have a strange effect on us, can cause odd chemical reactions in the brain. Heat can bring out secrets; it can change people's personalities.

If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic....Authors arrive at text and subtext in thousands of ways, learning each time they begin anew how to recognize a valuable idea and how to reader the texture that accompanies, reveals or displays it to its best advantage.

The great authors were great readers, and one way to understand them is to read the books they read.

Authors have a greater right than any copyright, though it is generally unacknowledged or disregarded. They have a right to the reader's civility. There are favorable hours for reading a book, as for writing it, and to these the author has a claim. Yet many people think that when they buy a book they buy with it the right to abuse the author.

The circumstance which gives authors an advantage above all these great masters, is this, that they can multiply their originals; or rather, can make copies of their works, to what number they please, which shall be as valuable as the originals themselves.

Goodnight world. While I sleep, I hope you'll all continue to do whatever it is you do. Unless you murder sleeping authors. Don't do that.

Authors of so-called 'literary' fiction insist that action, like plot, is vulgar and unworthy of a true artist. Don't pay any attention to misguided advice of that sort. If you do, you will very likely starve trying to live on your writing income. Besides, the only writers who survive the ages are those who understand the need for action in a novel.

Not surprisingly, the chief way self-published authors get the word out about their books is through the Internet.

I'm such a fangirl when it comes to other writers. I read 250 books a year, and I'm always talking up books by other authors.

I always thought books were just the canon, things I couldn't identify with. And then I was introduced to really amazing multicultural literature - it was all things I was trying to do unsuccessfully in my poetry. It really just changed everything. I was introduced to authors like Sandra Cisneros, Gabriel García Márquez, Junot Díaz, and a lot of African American literature, as well.

Reading is a pleasure of the mind, which means that it is a little like a sport: your eagerness and knowledge and quickness count for something. The fun of reading is not that something is told to you, but that you stretch your mind. Your own imagination works along with the authors, or even goes beyond his, yields the same or different conclusions, and your ideas develop as you understand his.

The Internet is a big boon to academic research. Gone are the days spent in dusty library stacks digging for journal articles. Many articles are available free to the public in open-access journal or as preprints on the authors' website.

We are each the authors of our own lives, Emma. We live in what we have created. There is no way to shift the blame and no one else to accept the accolades.

A lot of powerful people in Washington may think it's a crazy-leftist-fringe position to think the intellectual authors of a torture regime should be investigated and prosecuted.

A lot of authors see their book being banned or challenged as a badge of honor. But for me, it's nothing but frustrating and upsetting. I hear from readers that my work encouraged them to ask for help or reach out to someone about the situation they're in. When you hear stories like that on a daily basis and then hear adults call for your work to be banned, it's proof of why the stigma around these issues is so dangerous.

Time is of no account with great thoughts, which are as fresh to -day as when they first passed through their authors' minds ages ago.

I'm thoroughly convinced that editors don't help authors.

A Path Appears is an insightful book focused on how individuals can contribute to positive change and the remarkable people behind the organizations that make it happen. The authors' desire to motivate people to support good causes, learn about the situation in other countries, and find the best way to help their fellow men and women is inspiring.

Authors we are in danger of accepting as gospel, whereas founders of discursivity provide permeable ideas that we can elaborate upon in a tradition of constructive dialogue.

Liberals see the Constitution itself as 'living' and 'evolving' that is, gradually turning into something that would have been unrecognizable to its authors.

When it comes to locations, I'm one of those crazy authors who has to see it, touch it, taste it, before I trust myself to recreate it for my readers. Having said that, visiting a locked-down pediatric psych ward was the most intimidating research I've ever done - and I've visited maximum security prisons, shooting galleries, bone collections, etc.

My 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.

Also, I've spent an entire week without reading any books or talking about them too loudly. I'm learning to work my apparat's screen, the colourful pulsating mosaic of it, the fact that it knows every last stinking detail about the world, whereas my books only know the minds of their authors.

Never measure literature by accounting statistics. A quarter of working authors earn less than $1,000.

The phrase 'academic freedom' is often used carelessly: here is a work that will allow a more careful conversation about those many crucial issues facing the academy, in which a well-worked out understanding of conceptions of academic freedom is, as its authors show, an essential tool.

Thus, then, stands the case. It is good, that authors should be remunerated; and the least exceptionable way of remunerating them is by a monopoly. Yet monopoly is an evil. For the sake of the good we must submit to the evil; but the evil ought not to last a day longer than is necessary for the purpose of securing the good.

Some authors, when starting a novel, imagine a place first. Others, a character starts taking shape in their head. I start with a hook, a situation, a 'what if.

"Ageism" or whatever you want to call it, is a very English phenomenon. You don't get it too much in many other cultures. And no one says it about authors or poets or filmmakers. "Oh, they're too old to make films or write books." You know what I mean?

Favourite directors change, like favorite authors. I had a passion for Gide and Stein and Faulkner. But now they're no use to me anymore. I've assimilated them - so, enough, they are a closed chapter. This also applies to film directors.

Millions of people are provided with their thoughts as with their clothes; authors, printers, booksellers, and newsmen stand, in relation to their minds, simply as shoemakers and tailors stand to their bodies.

Personally, I always wondered about authors and celebrities who loudly declared there was no God. It was usually when they were healthy and popular and being listened to by crowds. What happens, I wondered, in the quiet moments before death? By then, they have lost the stage, the world has moved on. If suddenly, in their last gasping moments, through fear, a vision, a late enlightenment, they change their minds about God, who would know?

Quit smoking in the hope of growing old. It takes a long time to write. People go to books for wisdom and older authors tend to have more of it.

One of my favorite authors is Robert Cormier. He was a devout Catholic and a very nice man, which might not be the impression you get from reading his books.