Author Quotes

I think it's a little simplistic to explain a work through the psychology of its author. In other words, that Haneke has emotional problems, so I don't have to take his films seriously. By using this argument, the viewer retreats from the challenges of the film.

Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.

Musical types tend to combine the burden of the author with the burden of the actor.

Time made me change. I gradually woke up to the realization that this is who I am, an author, a public figure, and I couldn't just hide in my study, tapping away at the keyboard and pretend that I didn't have a role to play beyond stringing words together.

I am sure that no traveler seeing things through author spectacles can see them as they are.

Somebody will be able to crack ebook files in the same way that people cracked music files a decade ago. An author could have worked for three years on his book, have someone buy it for their Kindle for £6.99 and then see it shared with everyone in the world for free.

Those who have heard me speak from time to time know that quite often I cite the observation of that great American author, Mark Twain, who said, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

An author knows his landscape best; he can stand around, smell the wind, get a feel for his place.

Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.

The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.

But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be aware of this till she is pretty far along with it.

Quite often I can be in a bookshop, standing beneath a great big picture of myself and paying for a book with a credit card clearly marked John Grisham, yet no one recognises me. I often say I'm a famous author in a country where no one reads.

The greatest king of Israel, King David, the author of the Psalms, sent a man out to die in battle so that he could sleep with his wife.

It can certainly happen that characters in more sophisticated stories can "take over" as they develop and change the author's original ideas. Well, it certainly happens to me at times.

Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

I have been told by hospital authorities that more copies of my works are left behind by departing patients than those of any other author.

Right now, my career is in three directions: as a performer, as an arranger, as an author - and I don't give any one of them true precedent, or true top marks, as opposed to the other two.

Action is greater than writing. A good man is a nobler object of contemplation than a great author. There are but two things worth living for: to do what is worthy of being written; and to write what is worthy of being read.

It's easier to come up with new stories than it is to finish the ones you already have. I think every author would feel that way.

If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism. If you steal from two, it's research.

I have relaxed into my persona as an author, although I used to fight that.

One might almost reckon mathematically that, having undergone the double composition of public opinion and of the author, their history reaches us at third hand and is thus separated by two stages from the original fact.

I hate the actor and audience business. An author should be in among the crowd, kicking their shins or cheering them on to some mischief or merriment.

The prosecutor, who is supposed to carry the burden of proof, really is an author.

An author who sets about to depict events of the past that have run their course is suspected of wishing to avoid the problems of the present day, of being, in other words, a reactionary.

The humor section is the last place an author wants to be. They put your stuff next to collections of Cathy cartoons.

An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.

In Endless Quest books, you start the plot, and the character has to make choices. Then you have to write one choice over here, one choice over there. The author might get one or two choices out.

The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.