Quotes About Authors

My book sales make 'real writers' possible.

When I moved from Cambridge, I donated all my fiction. I carefully cut out pages the authors had autographed for me. I didn't want those autographed books showing up on eBay.

You walk into BookCon, and everybody is so excited... it's just paradise.

This to me is the secret comedy of all author interviews, down through the ages, even the good ones in the 'Paris Review' and places. They're all acting. It's like watching a person in a play.

There's no doubt that scientific training helps many authors to write better science fiction. And yet, several of the very best were English majors who could not parse a differential equation to save their lives.

If you look at the publishers I've worked with, generally, they're a great bunch. Creation is unlike any other publishing house you can think of. The people I've worked with have integrity and intelligence and, almost always, less money than ideas.

The truth is that Trout, like Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury and many others, writes parables. These are set in frames which have become called, for no good reason, science fiction. A better generic term would be 'future fairy tales'. And even this is objectionable, since many science fiction stories take place in the present or the past, far and near.

There is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isn't true!

There is bad in all good authors

I don't ask writers about their work habits. I really don't care. Joyce Carol Oates says somewhere that when writers ask each other what time they start working and when they finish and how much time they take for lunch, they're actually trying to find out, "Is he as crazy as I am?" I don't need that question answered.

I only write books about dead people. They can't sue.

hiérarchie des genres et, à l'intérieur de ceux-ci, la légitimité relative des styles et des auteurs est une dimension fondamentale de l'espace des possibles. Bien qu'elle soit à chaque moment un enjeu de luttes, elle se présente comme un donné avec lequel on doit compter, fût-ce pour s'y opposer et le transformer.

There are probably writers who are much more visual than I am and some who are less. I like to think of myself as a happy medium.

Print-on-demand publishing is the new farm system for new voices in fiction. Authors who have compelling things to say, who can market their stories in compelling ways, will succeed.

If you look at my personal library, you will notice that it ranges from Henry James to Steig Larsson, from Margaret Atwood to Max Hastings. There's Jane Austen and Tom Perrotta and volumes of letters from Civil War privates. It's pretty eclectic.

'The New Jedi Order' was a pure publishing project: a single massive story - virtually one huge novel spread across multiple volumes - told by a succession of authors.

I am a voracious reader, so it's difficult for me to give a list of my favourite authors of all time.

A lot of aspiring writers are all ready to write a novel, but they don't know how to write sentences.

There are so many good authors; there's no shortage of them.

Good authors mature over time: it does take awhile.

Bad reviews are the bane of an author's post-publication existence.

So many Jonathans . A plague of literary Jonathans .

My hours of leisure I spent in reading the best authors, ancient and modern, being always provided with a good number of books; and when I was ashore, in observing the manners and dispositions of the people, as well as learning their language; wherein I had a great facility, by the strength of my memory.

My hours of leisure I spent in reading the best authors, ancient and modern, being always provided with a good number of books; and when I was ashore, in observing the manners and dispositions of the people, as well as learning their language; wherein I had a great facility, by the strength of my memory. The last of these voyages not proving very fortunate