Young Authors Quotes

#1. I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors.
There is so much aspiration in them,
so much audacious hope and trembling fear,
so much of the heart's history, that all errors
and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of
in the amiable self assertion of youth.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

#2. After all, it is a common weakness of young authors to put too much into their papers.

Ronald Fisher

#3. Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature.

O. Henry

#4. Young authors give their brains much exercise and little food.

Joseph Joubert

#5. There's a lot of young authors out there, and people do seem to forget: in order to write well, you do need to have some experience.

Richard K. Morgan

#6. My advice to would-be young authors is to read a lot, write a lot, and not worry about creating a finished product. Keeping a journal is not a bad idea either.

Kevin Henkes

#7. I had one of those defining moments in the fourth grade when my teacher said the story I wrote was the best in the class, and therefore I would be going Young Authors Conference where I'd get to hang out with authors all day.

Lisa McMann

#8. When I was young, I assumed that authors must have traveled the world or done exotic things in order to tell great stories.

Kevin Henkes

#9. If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they're happy.

Dorothy Parker

#10. For me, it's been a treat to interact with authors who were publishing when I was a young reader. Judy Blume once gave me a pep talk at a writing conference. I had a short story featured in the same anthology as Beverly Cleary. Magic.

Cynthia Leitich Smith

#11. There are several authors who are also lawyers - and not only the ones who write legal thrillers. There are other attorneys who write romantic fiction, and I know of at least one who writes young adult books.

Candace Camp

#12. The time is ripe for young Indian authors writing in the English language.

Anurag Shourie

#13. The deeper into this chapter in my life I get, the fainter the hum of crucifixion becomes.

Maggie Young

#14. What's interesting to me is how many vampire/urban fantasy authors are writing young adult series as well, often set in the same world as their adult books, but focused on a younger audience.

Carrie Vaughn

#15. Believe in your dreams and when people doubt you, prove them wrong.

Sky Diamond

#16. What is your advice to young writers?"
"Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes.

Charles Bukowski

#17. I'm working with published authors and some very young undergraduates and lots of people in between. They are lovely people, and they can write.

Mal Peet

#18. Soon after publishing a book for kids, my mailbox began to fill with letters from children all across America. Not because my novels for young readers are bestsellers - they're not by a long shot - but because today's kids love to write to authors.

Rodman Philbrick

#19. The road lay long and black ahead of them and the heat was coming now through the thin soles of their shoes. There were young beans pushing up from the dry brown fields, tiny rows of green sprigs that stretched away in the distance.

Larry Brown

#20. It is not your job to convince men to like you.

Maggie Young

#21. 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

#22. So Matilda's strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.

Roald Dahl

#23. You can't exploit a woman who has based her entire career on exploiting herself.

Maggie Young

#24. All Jane Austen novels have a common storyline: an attractive and virtuous young woman surmounts difficulties to achieve marriage to the man of her choice. This is the age-long convention of the romantic novel, but with Jane Austen, what we have is Mills & Boon written by a genius.

P.D. James

#25. A lot of young-adult authors, great ones, have tried their hands at literary fiction, and not a lot of them have succeeded. Not even Roald Dahl could switch-hit, and not for lack of trying.

Lev Grossman

#26. I don't remember titles of books or authors from when I was young. I remember the title of only one book, which was 'The Timber Toes.' I remember it was a family of little wooden people who lived in the woods, and for some reason that stayed with me.

Sharon Creech

#27. Affairs began, drama spread, and traditional, good-old-boy camaraderie was tainted by the temptresses who represented the inconvenience of feminism.

Maggie Young

#28. Female authors were still using male names when I was young, or they were neatly shoehorned into 'women's books' except for those few that men could always point at when the disparity was pointed out.

Sherwood Smith

#29. I like to read fiction, and I particularly enjoy reading young adult fiction. But I also read children's books, adult books, current authors, and classics, but I like fiction the most.

James Howe

#30. There are two things I am afraid of. One is dying young. The other is Johnny Monroe.

Susan Gabriel

#31. I've always had a very binge and then cleanse approach to casual sex for that very reason. We long for an intimate connection, but that longing makes us feel vulnerable. Therefore, we guard our hearts for self-preservation, which barricades that intimacy we are longing for.

Maggie Young

#32. When their voices didn't reach my ears,
I rebelled against my own skin
too young to realize that without their
stories I would starve.

Kiana Davis

#33. 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

#34. Patriarchy is women structuring lifelong decisions around men they haven't met.

Maggie Young

#35. 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

#36. There are only so many letters in the alphabet. When I talk to young musicians or authors and they ask for advice, I say, 'You gotta learn all the letters of your own personal alphabet. With music, you need to know all the different kinds of music and everything in and around your given instrument.'

David Lee Roth

#37. We want to believe. Young students try to believe in older authors, constituents try to believe in their Congressmen, countries try to believe in their statesmen, but they can't. Too many voices, too much scattered, illogical ill-considered criticism.

F Scott Fitzgerald