Author Quotes

There is an element of autobiography in all fiction in that pain or distress, or pleasure, is based on the author's own. But in my case that is as far as it goes.

Asking the author of historical novels to teach you about history is like expecting the composer of a melody to provide answers about radio transmission.

When we see a natural style, we are astonished and charmed; for we expected to see an author, and we find a person.

In every author let us distinguish the man from his works.

Even the crudest, most derivative novel is an expression of the author's hopes and fears and ideas about good and evil.

The future author is one who discovers that language, the exploration and manipulation of the resources of language, will serve him in winning through to his way.

Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.

With a film, I do my best to understand the author's intentions and try to bring the characters to life.

I consider myself an inventor, entrepreneur, and author.

There is not less wit nor less invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought.

Stories where the author has known very little, but run a computer program that tells him how to construct a planet, and looked up specific things about rocketry and so on, really suck.

The author of the Iliad is either Homer or, if not Homer, somebody else of the same name.

Certainly the most diverse, if minor, pastime of literary life is the game of Find the Author.

Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?

Great literature must spring from an upheaval in the author's soul. If that upheaval is not present then it must come from the works of any other author which happens to be handy and easily adapted.

No, it's not a very good story - its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.

Who learns most from a good book is the author.

In the past I have declined to comment on my own work: because, it seems to me, a poem is what it is; because a poem is itself a definition, and to try to redefine it is to be apt to falsify it; and because the author is the person least able to consider his work objectively.

I've lost both parents in the last two years, so you pick up on that stuff. That's the most terrible thing about being an author - standing there at your mother's funeral, but you don't switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill.

What I like in a good author is not what he says but what he whispers.

As an inspiration to the author, I do not think the cat can be over-estimated. He suggests so much grace, power, beauty, motion, mysticism. I do not wonder that many writers love cats; I am only surprised that all do not.

A publisher should always be on the receiving end. He should take an interest in almost any subject and remain anonymous, letting the author take center stage.

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

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

In the works of man, everything is as poor as its author; vision is confined, means are limited, scope is restricted, movements are labored, and results are humdrum.

Shakespeare is the true multicultural author. He exists in all languages. He is put on the stage everywhere. Everyone feels that they are represented by him on the stage.

An author departs, he does not die.

Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author's phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.

I was shy. Bookish. The kind of 13-year-old girl who, instead of having a boyfriend, would have a crush on a dead, 19th-century author!

Now, Venus is an extremely hostile environment, and as such presents a lot of challenges for a science fiction author who wants to create life there. However, as I began to research it more thoroughly, I found myself intrigued by the possibilities the world offers.