Author Quotes

When you take stuff from one author, it's plagiarism if you take it from many writers, it's research. (Wilson Mizner)
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child. View quote
Vladimir Nabokov
An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere. View quote
Gustave Flaubert
Great literature must spring from an upheaval in the author's soul. If that upheaval is not present then it must come from the works of any other author which happens to be handy and easily adapted. View quote
Robert Benchley
I think the author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children. View quote
Benjamin Disraeli
Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author? View quote
Philip Gilbert Hamerton
A narrative is like a room on whose walls a number of false doors have been painted; while within the narrative, we have many apparent choices of exit, but when the author leads us to one particular door, we know it is the right one because it opens. View quote
John Updike
Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of American Independence, Of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, And Father of the University of Virginia. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
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. View quote
Thomas Paine
You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism. (W. Somerset Maugham)
In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them. View quote
Alexis de Tocqueville
The future author is one who discovers that language, the exploration and manipulation of the resources of language, will serve him in winning through to his way. View quote
Thornton Wilder
The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new. View quote
William Makepeace Thackeray
All worthy work is open to interpretations the author did not intend. Art isn't your pet - it's your kid. It grows up and talks back to you. View quote
Joss Whedon
Making a book is a craft, as is making a clock it takes more than wit to become an author. View quote
Jean de La Bruyère
I shall be but a shrimp of an author. View quote
Thomas Gray
I'm a commercial writer, not an author. Margaret Mitchell was an author. She wrote one book. View quote
Mickey Spillane
For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible. View quote
Arthur Schopenhauer
Literary critics, however, frequently suffer from a curious belief that every author longs to extend the boundaries of literary art, wants to explore new dimensions of the human spirit, and if he doesn't, he should be ashamed of himself. View quote
Robertson Davies
Pity the man who has a favorite restaurant, but not a favorite author. He's picked out a favorite place to feed his body, but he doesn't have a favorite place to feed his mind! (Jim Rohn)
Certainly the most diverse, if minor, pastime of literary life is the game of Find the Author. View quote
Arthur Miller
An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations. View quote
Montesquieu
He is the richest author that ever grazed the common of literature. View quote
Samuel Johnson
It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead