Point-of-view is a matter that readers rarely pay attention to, yet it’s one of the most important story decisions an author makes.
A good column is one that sells paper. It doesn’t matter how beautifully it is written and how much you admire the author… if it doesn’t sell any papers, it’s not a good column. It’s a terrible yardstick to use, but in the newspaper business, that’s the whole thing.
Here was buried Thomas Jefferson Author of the Declaration of American Independence Of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom & Father of the University of Virginia.
I don’t have a favorite author; I have favorite books. ‘Moby Dick’ is a favorite book, but Melville was a drunk who beat his wife. ‘Moveable Feast’ by Hemingway, but I would not like him personally. He was a stupid macho person who believed in shooting animals for fun, but that book was incredible!
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
A very wise author once said that a writer writes for himself, and then publishes for money. I write for myself and publish just for the reader.
I’m a computer scientist by training. I’m also the author of three books, all of which endorse the use of biotechnology to improve the human condition. In the most recent of these, ‘The Infinite Resource,’ I talk about the power of innovation to save the world.
I’ve tried to slow this down but realized that my natural reading rhythm is freakishly fast when an author friend asked me to go through the manuscript of her soon-to-be-published book for continuity errors.
The first author I remember being obsessed by, actually realizing ‘I like the way he writes and I like the way he tells stories,’ was C.S. Lewis and the ‘Narnia’ books.
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.
I’m an author whose strength is in gag-writing.
When you read a piece of writing that you admire, send a note of thanks to the author.
Numerous are the posthumous museums and memorials devoted exclusively to one artist, architect or author and designed to preserve or artificially reconstruct the namesake’s original working or living conditions.
I know one author whose royalty income has been halved from £34,000 a year to £16,000.
If your life were a book and you were the author, how would you want your story to go? That’s the question that changed my life forever.
I have a huge author crush on Stephen King. Have never met him. Would probably embarrass myself. But it would be worth it.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
Certainly the most diverse, if minor, pastime of literary life is the game of Find the Author.
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
Like the philosopher, the author views his task as one of establishing a clear connection between life and history, and of making the past bear fruit for the present and future.
Becoming a YA author was actually a very lucky accident. When I wrote the ‘Queen of Everything,’ I thought it was a book for adults.
I have no intention of becoming a shorthand author.
English food writer Elizabeth David, cook and author Richard Olney and the owner of Domaine Tempier Lulu Peyraud have all really inspired the way I think about food.
It seems to me that an author who has determined very new domains in literature is Gertrude Stein.
My position as the best-selling author at E! is secure – unless Salman Rushdie develops a show with them.
The author of McCarthyism was given the distinction of addressing the Republican National Convention. This strikes terror in the hearts of honest men.
I’m better suited to be a director, I think. I see myself as the general author. I hate the word ‘auteur,’ because it sounds so solitary when filmmaking is anything but solitary.
It’s always tricky, meeting an author you’ve admired.
Shakespeare’s naturalness is attested to by the strange fact that he is the only classical author who remains popular. The critical termites are massed and eating away at the foundations, trying to topple him. Whether they will succeed will be a test of his robustness.
The prime goal of an author is the same as a musician, which is to emotionally connect with the reader in some way or another.
I have always wondered why the movie industry was so firmly persuaded that the original author could be of no possible help in the case of a remake or any other change in a work.
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.
Author: A fool who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on tormenting generations to come.
Unfortunately, the author of a book pretty much gives up control of the story when the producers take over a book to make it into a movie.
The best advice I got as a writer was also the first advice, which came from the late fantasy author and editor Karl Edward Wagner: Any agent who charges to look at your work is a crook.
I would very much like to become a best-selling author.
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.
I didn’t have any great talent. I didn’t want to become a rock star or an author.
The best critics do not worry about what the author might think. That would be like a detective worrying about what a suspect might think. Instead, they treat the reader as an intelligent friend, and describe the book as honestly, and as entertainingly, as possible.
As an author you hope your characters have sparks but truly in the end they have minds of their own!
You simply couldn’t make a living as an author if New Zealand was your only market.
When a character bears the same name as the author it’s just an invitation to have some fun.
I have never met an author who did not read voraciously as a child.
Initially, I wanted to write middle grade. YA scared me: there’s a lot of responsibility in being a YA author. It’s so important to give that age range the right books that reflect their world and show them themselves.
The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.
I am a young adult author, and so are quite a few of my friends. We all write books for the same demographic; many of us are even published by the same publishing house. Two of us, in fact, share the same editor.
I can tell you from experience that God’s help and presence in our lives is vital. He is the Author of all true success and everything that is good-without Him, we can do nothing of true value.
The thing about being a mystery writer, what marks a mystery writer out from a chick lit author or historical fiction writer, is that you always find a mystery in every situation.
When I was 13 or 14, I took this speed-reading course. A lot of the things you do in speed reading you shouldn’t do to a good author, but I’ve been reading really fast ever since.
All fiction becomes autobiographical when the author has true talent.
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.
When me and my author friends who write about other difficult subject matter… when you hear from teens daily saying, ‘Your book helped me or made me understand a friend better, what somebody else is going through,’ you see the positive things.
I have relaxed into my persona as an author, although I used to fight that.
No one person is the author of a Bourne film. The truth is it’s a coalition of people who share the same vision for Bourne and his world, and we… its remarkably collaborative and collective.
Having spent the greater part of my life under a Communist dictatorship, I am very familiar with the Bolshevik mentality according to which an author in general, and an eminent author in particular, is always guilty, and must be punished accordingly.
Every time I enter a country and have to write down my occupation at customs, I’m like, ‘I don’t know… Author? Host? Writer? Stand-up?’ I usually write ‘author’ – that’s the safest bet.
The life of a play begins and ends in the moment of performance. This is where author, actors, and directors express all they have to say. If the event has a future, this can only lie in the memories of those who were present and who retained a trace in their hearts.
When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
