Quotes About Authors

The agitation of the slavery question is mischievous and wicked, and proceeds from no patriotic motive by its authors," Polk wrote in late December 1848.

The great British Library --an immense collection of volumes of all ages and languages, many of which are now forgotten, and most of which are seldom read: one of these sequestered pools of obsolete literature to which modern authors repair, and draw buckets full of classic lore, or pure English, undefiled wherewith to swell their own scanty rills of thought.

Sometimes he spent hours together in the great libraries of Paris, those catacombs of departed authors, rummaging among their hoards of dusty and obsolete works in quest of food for his unhealthy appetite. He was, in a manner, a literary ghoul, feeding in the charnel-house of decayed literature.

The rest of their authors were thrown out there, much like shit flung at a wall, while the publisher waited to see who "stuck," or so it seemed to Kendall.

Henry James created more convincing women than Iris Murdoch put together.

The poet John Keats noted that whereas great authors are 'capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason', the rest of us are 'incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge'.39

I am still, relentlessly, reading Agee, and Flannery, too. Two of the writers who fired me to write post–Marine Corps, when I needed it, were Mr. McGuane and Mr. Harrison, and their books are always nearby, well thumbed. And Kawabata and James Salter, both of whom floor me.

James Agee and Flannery O'Connor have impacted on me hardest

I am now to offer some thoughts upon that sameness or familiarity which we frequently find between passages in different authors without quotation. This may be one of three things either what is called Plagiarism, or Imitation, or Coincidence.

The adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, a team generally regarded as seeking justice, can be compared to the adventures of Rex Stout's two most famous characters, Nero Wolf and Archie Goodwin.

When we see a later author present a repetition of an earlier pattern, which was informed by a promise, as readers we begin to sense that we are dealing with a sequence of events (a type, pattern, or schema) that the biblical authors saw to be significant, even if they were puzzled by it

If biblical theology is a way to get into another world, the world inhabited by the biblical authors, you have a right to understand my intentions. My hope is that you cross the bridge into their thought-world and never come back. I hope you will breathe the air of the Bible's world, recognize it as the real Narnia, and never want to leave.

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

Cybersecurity whitepaper authors have it all wrong! It's about weaponizing the mind of the reader so that when they're done reading the document, you've memetically drilled home actionable concepts that will expediently impact their cyber defense.

To find the best authors," he boasted, "is like being able to tell good wine without the labels.

The two authors she brought with her from that period of reading were Whitman and Thoreau—but then, she had been reading them for years, as some people read the Bible.

G. K. Chesterton says,' put in Wimsey, 'that most people with a very well-defined style write at times what looks like bad parodies of themselves. He mentions Swinburne, for instance – that bit about "From the lilies and languors of virtue to the raptures and roses of vice.

I've been talking about how electronic books will come, and how important they will be, and all of a sudden Stephen King publishes one. I feel a complete idiot, as it should have been me.

Det kan du stole på. Liker du detektivfortellinger? Det gjør jeg. Jeg leser alle sammen, og har navnetrekkene til Dorothy Sayers og Agatha Christie og Dickson Carr og H.C. Bailey.

It began to falter not when the book publishers who loved books gave way to those who preferred profits to reading. It happened when publishers and editors cut back on their drinking. If there is one national flower in book publishing, it is the martini.

Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.

Authors, she soon decided, were probably best met within the pages of their novels, and were as much creatures of the reader's imagination as the characters in their books. Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them.

she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.

I like Philip Roth, John Updike, and Richard Yates.