Author Quotes - page 4

Action is greater than writing. A good man is a nobler object of contemplation than a great author. There are but two things worth living for: to do what is worthy of being written; and to write what is worthy of being read. (Ross Perot)
Don't patronize the chain bookstores. Every time I see some author scheduled to read and sign his books at a chain bookstore, I feel like telling him he's stabbing the independent bookstores in the back. View quote
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
An illustrator in my own mind - and this is not a truth of any kind - is someone who so falls in love with writing that he wishes he had written it, and the closest he can get to is illustrating it. And the next thing you learn, you have to find something unique in this book, which perhaps even the author was not entirely aware of. And that's what you hold on to, and that's what you add to the pictures: a whole Other Story that you believe in, that you think is there. View quote
Maurice Sendak
It is language which speaks in literature, in all its swarming 'polysemic' plurality, not the author himself. View quote
Terry Eagleton
Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman "other” or flawed derivative of the author; the lack of a pen is no longer a shameful mark of secondary status but a positively enabling space, just as within every writer can be seen to lurk, as a repressed but contaminating antithesis, a reader. View quote
Terry Eagleton
Literary texts do not exist on bookshelves: they are processes of signification materialized only in the practice of reading. For literature to happen, the reader is quite as vital as the author. View quote
Terry Eagleton
There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author. The term is 'idiot'. View quote
Larry Niven
If Shakespeare had to go on an author tour to promote Romeo and Juliet, he never would have written Macbeth. View quote
Joyce Brothers
No author ever spar'd a brother. View quote
John Gay
What I like in a good author is not what he says but what he whispers. View quote
Logan Pearsall Smith
Deliberately or not, every author is of course present in every book he or she writes - even in a scientific text. (Abraham Pais)
I'm not an author, I'm a writer, that's all I am. Authors want their names down in history; I want to keep the smoke coming out of the chimney. View quote
Mickey Spillane
Now I'm not an author, I'm a writer, that's all I am. View quote
Mickey Spillane
Shakespeare is the true multicultural author. He exists in all languages. He is put on the stage everywhere. Everyone feels that they are represented by him on the stage. View quote
Harold Bloom
A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously. View quote
Albert Camus
As Jules Renard said, no matter how much care an author takes to write as few books as possible, there will be people who haven't heard of some of them. View quote
Donald Barthelme
The author discusses valueless measures in pointless spaces. View quote
Paul Halmos
A presentation copy...is a copy of a book whoch does not sell, sent you by the author, with his foolish autograph at the beginning of it; for which, if a stranger, he only demands your friendship; if a brother author, he expects from you a book of yours, which does not sell, in return. View quote
Charles Lamb
Moreover, a true Christian will not ascribe any prosperity to his own diligence, industry, or good fortune, but he will acknowledge that God is the author of it. View quote
John Calvin
When we read of human beings behaving in certain ways, with the approval of the author, who gives his benediction to this behavior by his attitude towards the result of the behavior arranged by himself, we can be influenced towards behaving in the same way. View quote
T. S. Eliot
The translator of prose is the slave of the author, and the translator of poetry is his rival. (Andreï Makine)
If at times I have thought myself unfortunate, it is because of a confusion, an error. I have mistaken myself for someone else... Who am I really? I am the author of The World as Will and Representation, I am the one who has given an answer to the mystery of Being that will occupy the thinkers of future centuries. That is what I am, and who can dispute it in the years of life that still remain for me? View quote
Arthur Schopenhauer
No, it's not a very good story - its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside. View quote
Stephen King
This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once: scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic. View quote
Carl Jung
That author, however, who has thought more than he has read, read more than he has written, and written more than he has published, if he does not command success, has at least deserved it. View quote
Charles Caleb Colton