Authors Quotes

Some authors have a very hard time understanding that in order to be faithful to the spirit of the book, it's almost always impossible to remain faithful to the text. You have to make changes.

The key factor is whether the agent is a member of the Association of Authors' Representatives, which screens its members and requires them to uphold a Canon of Ethics.

People would react to books by authors like James and Austen almost on a gut level. I think it was not so much the message, because the best authors do not have obvious messages. These authors were disturbing to my students because of their perspectives on life.

I think authors can get into trouble viewing the subject matter as their turf.

In quoting of books, quote such authors as are usually read; others you may read for your own satisfaction, but not name them.

Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.

In practice, the copyright system does a bad job of supporting authors, aside from the most popular ones. Other authors' principal interest is to be better known, so sharing their work benefits them as well as readers.

What has always surprised me when I walk into a bookstore is the number of books that you can find that are written with certainty. The authors tell some story as though it's true, but they don't have any evidence that it is true!

The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction. This practice was useful, and is the only way many authors' works have survived even in part.

Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death has no dominion over them; they live, and their influence lives forever.

There's no doubt that scientific training helps many authors to write better science fiction. And yet, several of the very best were English majors who could not parse a differential equation to save their lives.

All great authors are seers.

Now it is quite clear to me that there are no solid spheres in the heavens, and those that have been devised by the authors to save the appearances, exist only in the imagination.

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

All those authors there, most of whom of course I've never met. That's the poetry side, that's the prose side, that's the fishing and miscellaneous behind me. You get an affection for books that you've enjoyed.

Even the contemporary horror authors who have seriously influenced me are a disparate bunch.

Of the female black authors, I really like Morrison's early books a lot. But she's really become so much a clone of Faulkner. He did it better.

Dr. Johnson has said that the chief glory of a country arises from its authors. But then that is only as they are oracles of wisdom; unless they teach virtue, they are more worthy of a halter than of the laurel.

November is Jewish book month, so Jewish Community Centers all around the country have book fairs where they invite authors and sell books in advance of the holidays.

A pin has as much head as some authors and a good deal more point.

In England only uneducated people show off their knowledge; nobody quotes Latin or Greek authors in the course of conversation, unless he has never read them.

Authors are sometimes like tomcats: They distrust all the other toms but they are kind to kittens.

Almost all novels are improved by cutting from the top. On their first pages, authors parade those favourite effects which disgust the impartial reader.

I can't speak for the other authors, but what I hoped to achieve was to illuminate certain corners of the Lucas universe that hadn't yet been explored.

We see them when they come to New York. They stay at my wife's apartment. We have quite a correspondence with them at all times. They play a very important role, the authors in the firm, because so much of the material we publish is suggested by them.

Monarchs ought to put to death the authors and instigators of war, as their sworn enemies and as dangers to their states.

Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.

Let authors write for glory and reward. The truth is well paid when she is sung and heard.

I should have no objection to go over the same life from its beginning to the end: requesting only the advantage authors have, of correcting in a second edition the faults of the first.

By reading a lot of novels in a variety of genres, and asking questions, it's possible to learn how things are done - the mechanics of writing, so to speak - and which genres and authors excel in various areas.