Author Quotes

For a dyed-in-the-wool author, nothing is as dead as a book once it is written. She is rather like a cat whose kittens have grown up.

After an author has been dead for some time, it becomes increasingly difficult for his publishers to get a new book out of him each year.

In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.

The really great novel tends to be the exact negative of its author's life.

A bad author can take the most moral issue and make you want to just never, ever think about that moral issue.

As a journalist for 35 years, and now author for 20, I've learned that there's always more.

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.

With any work worth its salt, you have to trust the author enough to take its measure. And if you apply too many preconceptions, you are not taking its measure.

Once the curtain is raised, the actor is ceases to belong to himself. He belongs to his character, to his author, to his public. He must do the impossible to identify himself with the first, not to betray the second, and not to disappoint the third.

He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.

No author has created with less emphasis such pathetic characters as Chekhov has.

What makes a book great, a so-called classic, it its quality of always being modern, of its author, though he be long dead, continuing to speak to each new generation.

When a French book becomes an international hit it is because of the author and not because of the language. The same goes for movies.

There are a lot of authors in the world, so it's difficult to find a unique niche to present your take on things. That is always a challenge for any author.

What an author likes to write most is his signature on the back of a cheque.

We wanted to create an environment where if a game player enjoyed the "writing style" of a particular game designer, he or she could look for the next game by that same author and not be disappointed.

An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.

If Shakespeare had to go on an author tour to promote Romeo and Juliet, he never would have written Macbeth.

If the work is poor, the public taste will soon do it justice. And the author, reaping neither glory nor fortune, will learn by hard experience how to correct his mistakes.

In all honesty, at that time, I never saw myself as an author... I was just a Mom in a state of panic, trying to enter a short story contest to win the prize money in order to keep the lights on in my home.

If you steal from one author it's plagiarism; if you steal from many it's research.

Fiction writing was in my blood from a very young age, but I never considered writing as a real career. I thought you had to have some literary pedigree to be a successful author, the son of Hemingway or Fitzgerald.

I took up a sort of a hobby of just hanging around the local library. I'd pick out an author and I would read all their books.

At dramatic rehearsals, the only author that's better than an absent one is a dead one.

All fiction becomes autobiographical when the author has true talent.

I did about 2000 covers altogether, for all sorts of books - from Shakespeare to James Bond - and I always had the idea that I must give 100%, no matter who the author was.

I 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.

I would very much like to become a best-selling author.

But the longer I'm in the business, you see a lot of times these screenplays have been rewritten 5 times and you're not really offending an author.

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. She will not want new fashions nor regret the loss of expensive diversions or variety of company if she can be amused with an author in her closet.