Author Quotes

Generally, if you preface an interview request with, 'I'm an author writing a book,' for some reason, that seems to open a lot of doors.

I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author's political views.

Choose an author as you choose a friend.

An author must be nothing if he do not love truth; a barrister must be nothing if he do.

There is no less invention in aptly applying a thought found in a book, than in being the first author of the thought.

It seems to me that an author who has determined very new domains in literature is Gertrude Stein.

My biggest accomplishment has been making a transition from athlete to author.

It is conceivable that what is unified form to the author or composer may of necessity be formless to his audience.

Our life is a book that writes itself and whose principal themes sometimes escape us. We are like characters in a novel who do not always understand what the author wants of them.

There is a note in the front of the volume saying that no public reading may be given without first getting the author's permission. It ought to be made much more difficult to do than that.

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one, it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.

I can't change overnight into a serious literary author. You can't compare apples to oranges. William Faulkner was a great literary genius. I am not.

The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by 500 readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the 500, he reaches the five hundred thousand.

The way a book is read, which is to say, the qualities a reader brings to a book can have as much to do with its worth as anything the author puts into it.

You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author's world.

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

Anyone who wants simple, pat stories should buy another author's product. The real universe ain't that way, and neither are my fictive ones.

Literary critics, however, frequently suffer from a curious belief that every author longs to extend the boundaries of literary art, wants to explore new dimensions of the human spirit, and if he doesn't, he should be ashamed of himself.

Your source material is the people you know, not those you don't know, but every character is an extension of the author's own personality.

Sometimes the reader will decide something else than the author's intent; this is certainly true of attempts to empirically decipher reality.

President Roosevelt, the author of Social Security, was the first to suggest that, in order to provide for the country's retirement needs, Social Security would need to be supplemented by personal savings accounts.

Call me the author.

My parents were horrified when I told them I wanted to be an author.

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

It appears a bold thing to say so when one sees how much many a modern author who knows how to make a skilful use of the Book of Chronicles has to tell about the tabernacle.

Well I think any author or musician is anxious to have legitimate sales of their products, partly so they're rewarded for their success, partly so they can go on and do new things.

I try to read everything that's sent me - play scripts, movie scripts - but I've had to make a rule. If the author hasn't grabbed me by Page 25, the piece goes back with a note of apology.

No one's policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

You 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.

Writing a song is much like being an author. Yes, we all have tools to write (everyone has a brain I hope!), but that doesn't all of a sudden make us best selling authors.