Top 70 Quotes About Authors And Their Writing
#1. We need to boost each other to get to the top. It is much more effective than stepping on each other.
Teresa Mummert
#2. I have chosen to parody the writing styles of Carlos Castaneda, James Redfield, Richard Bach, Lynn Andrews, and several other best-selling new age authors.
Frederick Lenz
#3. Payment and reserved copyright are at bottom the ruin of literature. Only he who writes entirely for the sake of what he has to say writes anything worth writing. It is as if there were a curse on money: every writer writes badly as soon as he starts writing for gain.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#4. One of the notebooks was for musings and pep talks. ... The other notebooks were for writing out the novel the way authors had done for centuries.
Gail Godwin
#7. Pretend you're not spending $3 to read one of my books but buying me a coffee and having a conversation about yourself.
Robin Sacredfire
#8. Because as any writer will tell you, an IDEA for a book is like falling in love, it's all wild emotion and headlong rush, but the ACTUAL ACT of writing a book is like building a relationship: it is joyous, slow, fragile, frustrating, exhilarating, painstaking, exhausting, worth it.
Ben H. Winters
#9. Am reading more of Oscar Wilde. What a tiresome, affected sod.
Noel Coward
#10. It is the writer's job to craft a story so compelling that strangers will pay to hear it.
Seeley James
#11. Don't let society's defined genre hold you down, be a free spirit and just write, let society be the one to decide where each piece fits in.
Uma Nnenna
#13. [Science fiction is] out in the mainstream now. You can tell by the way mainstream literary authors pillage SF while denying they're writing it!
Terry Pratchett
#14. I never read prefaces, and it is not much good writing things just for people to skip. I wonder other authors have never thought of this.
E. Nesbit
#15. 10% of authors earn 75% of the royalties. If you're writing a Romance novel, your odds will be slightly higher at making back your investment. Throw in a few vampires, even better.
J.R. Young
#16. There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have done everything by chance.
Samuel Johnson
#17. There are two classes of authors: the one write the history of their times, the other their biography.
Henry David Thoreau
#18. I love words. I crave descriptions that overwhelm my imagination with vivid detail. I dwell on phrases that make my heart thrum. I cherish expressions that pierce my emotions and force the tears to spill over. In essence, I long for a writer's soul sealed in ink on the page.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#19. Good characters in fiction are the very devil. Not only because most authors have too little material to make them of, but because we as readers have a strong subconscious wish to find them incredible.
C.S. Lewis
#20. Good horror offers a sense of an upended, lawless world and that's appealing to anyone who grew up feeling like an outsider.
Christopher Rice
#21. The most difficult thing about writing; is writing the first line.
Amit Kalantri
#22. Writer's block' is just a fancy way of saying 'I don't feel like doing any work today.
Meagan Spooner
#23. For authors, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line only if you are writing the letter I.
Michael A. Arnzen
#25. What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.
J.D. Salinger
#26. Thank God For Writing, As Now I Can Work Until My Last Breath!
Latif Mercado
#27. - If you could describe my son in 3 words, what would you say?
- Sweet. Cute. Funny.
- That could be a description of a puppy she says dryly.
Mary Papas
#28. Authors have to write for their characters, for who they are, that's the strength of books. Don't worry about censors. Just write the story you need to tell and the rewards will come.
Ellen Hopkins
#29. To say that Agatha Christie's characters are cardboard cut-outs is an insult to cardboard cut-outs.
Ruth Rendell
#30. Just keep writing, and try to finish that novel. Remember, all authors started exactly where you are right now; the only difference between a published author and a non-published one is that the published author never stopped writing.
Julie Kagawa
#31. To some extent, all authors are a little schizophrenic. We lead most of our lives in solitary confinement, living and breathing the books that we're writing.
Sophie Kinsella
#33. I think authors are just realizing there's no real reason to feel limited to a narrow set of genre rules in their writing. There's no reason a mystery novel can't have fantastic elements in it. Similarly, there's no reason why your epic fantasy series can't have elements of a mystery.
Patrick Rothfuss
#34. Storytelling is a gift, but writing is a learned art.
Beem Weeks
#35. Since when did books ever solve anything? They only raise more questions than they answer, otherwise they're just fucking entertainment, and I am not here to fucking entertain you.
Zia Haider Rahman
#36. Sooner or later every writer evolves his own definition of a story.
Mine is: A reflection of life plus beginning and end (life seems not to have either) and a meaning.
Mary O'Hara
#37. Authors like reading. Go figure. So it's not surprising that we sometimes bog down in the research stage of new writing projects.
Edward M. Lerner
#38. All indies self-publish but not all self-publishers are indie.
Orna Ross
#39. Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.
Joseph Addison
#40. I researched fiction writing for months before I taught my first class, much of it looking for strong techniques from bestselling authors.
James Thayer
#41. Everyone's life is an evolution of emotions, spirit and beliefs. The storyline changes, plots thicken, main characters mature and new spiritual journeys begin. This is true of inspirational authors. Their books represent only the stages of their life. New triumphs of the soul have yet to be written!
Shannon L. Alder
#42. I learned to write from authors. I didn't know any, but I read their books.
Cynthia Rylant
#43. how these words, wait to die
in the arms of all the poetry..
yet to be written.
Sanober Khan
#44. It is a sad paradox that when male authors impersonate women ... they are said to be dealing with 'cosmic, major concerns' - but when we impersonate ourselves we are said to be writing 'women's fiction' or 'women's poetry.
Erica Jong
#45. The more I know about God, I am convinced He likes to read books and authors are His librarians. Every soul is a story waiting to be read.
Shannon L. Alder
#46. It comes a point in which you don't know if you write books or the books write you
Robin Sacredfire
#47. I have wanted to write from a young age, but working with so many gifted authors and editors over the years has taught me so much. I doubt I would be where I am today without that amazing experience.
Julie Klassen
#48. An author's strong belief and enthusiasm will affect the writing of the book and often the publisher's commitment to it.
Sterling Lord
#49. Professional writers don't have muses; they have mortgages.
Larry Kahaner
#50. One of the least impressive liberties is the liberty to starve. This particular liberty is freely accorded to authors.
Arnold Goodman, Baron Goodman
#51. Hone your writing skills as if they were your finest weapons of war. For in the literary arena, your pen will truly be your sword.
Max Hawthorne
#52. That is how we writers all started: by reading. We heard the voice of a book speaking to us.
Margaret Atwood
#53. Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.
Salman Rushdie
#54. But writers and their woes: they couldn't be parted. Not for anything.
Naomi Wood
#55. To say that a writer's hold on reality is tenuous is an understatement-it's like saying the Titanic had a rough crossing. Writer's build their own realities, move into them and occasionally send letters home. The only difference between a writer and a crazy person is that a writer gets paid for it.
David Gerrold
#56. I believe that in a good collaboration, the authors bring their strengths to the story; one author's strength cancels the other author's weakness, and back and forth it goes.
Jack Dann
#57. Even monarchs have need of authors, and fear their pens more than ugly women the painter's pencil.
Baltasar Gracian
#58. A brilliant mind was first a listener that observed the actions of the people that loved and hated them, then found a way to express their feelings, when real communication was lost.
Shannon L. Alder
#59. Contemporary writers annoyed him, he found their worlds insular, their style too self-conscious and ironic. Theirs was not a literature that belonged to him.
Christos Tsiolkas
#60. Writers are like tricksters. Their words lure us to embark on journeys and unlock our emotions.
Ogwo David Emenike
#61. Some build their castles 'mid thunderbolts and fireworks. My worlds take shape in silence.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#62. The human authors and editors of the Old Testament brought their own experiences and presuppositions to the task of writing. We don't often think about this when we read the Bible.
Adam Hamilton
#63. Language gradually varies, and with it fade away the writings of authors who have flourished their allotted time; otherwise, the creative powers of genius would overstock the world, and the mind would be completely bewildered in the endless mazes of literature.
Washington Irving
#64. Book writing is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Anyone who decides to write a book must expect to invest a lot of time and effort without any guarantee of success. Books do not write themselves and they do not sell themselves. Authors write and promote their books.
Dan Poynter
#65. All writers and their readers should stand up and voice their opposition to financial services companies censoring books. Authors should have the freedom to publish legal fiction, and readers should have the freedom to read what they want.
Mark Coker
#66. Hard core authors are determined about their craft, and they know that building a brand entails hard work. They eat, breathe and live their writing.:
Geraldine Solon
#67. I suspect that authors who start their careers writing for an adult audience - and who eventually produce a young adult novel or two - are more common than authors who begin by writing for young adults and who then gravitate toward composing something for an adult audience.
Paul Di Filippo
#68. As an arts journalist in London, working mainly for the BBC, I interviewed hundreds if not thousands of authors. From them I gleaned a great deal of passing instruction in writing and I observed one fascinating detail: no two writers approach their work - physically - in the same way.
Frank Delaney
#69. As the news agenda goes into warp speed, it becomes ever more difficult for authors writing about current events to keep their books timely and relevant.
Heather Brooke
#70. All artists' work is autobiographical. Any writer's work is a map of their psyche. You can really see what their concerns are, what their obsessions are, and what interests them.
Kim Addonizio