Quotes About Authors

I love telling stories for a living. The process of writing has its frustrations, but also its joys (there's no high like typing "The End.") The research is incredible. I love meeting other authors. I love working on something that's purely mine. But the best part is the idea that I kept somebody up past their bedtime, or made them miss their train stop. As a lifelong addict of story, it makes me happy to think that my work might hit other people the way books hit me.

The Internet offers authors and their readers a new diversity of opportunities and freedom.

Much of the theology of the Bible is what we could call "task theology." It is theological truth brought to bear on specific life situations. Since biblical authors seldom deal comprehensively with a particular topic, we must be cautious before assuming that we have the whole truth or the last word in any particular passage.

As an educator, I've sometimes found the rate of change in Python and its libraries to be a negative, and have on occasion lamented its growth over the years. This is partly because trainers and book authors live on the front lines of such things — it's been my job to teach the language despite its constant change, a task at times akin to chronicling the herding of cats!

The one living playwright I admire without any reservation whatsoever is Samuel Beckett. I have funny feelings about almost all the others.

Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are economical in its use.

Writers don't get mad they get even in their novels.

One thing that is sometimes forgotten in this "future of books" discussion is that there are all these awesome presses - big and small - that are producing and designing amazing books.

What the podcast novelists do isnt all that different from what self-publishers do. We put the books out in different formats, but the goal is the same: build an audience and attract a publisher.

People always live badly today; they only live well tomorrow. For the sake of ambition they strive against each other with evil deeds, but the path to glory would be easier to tread by doing good to one another. Although they always speak evil, they hope to be well spoken of themselves; although they do evil, they hope to receive good. We proclaim that we are the authors of good, but that God is the author of evil.

Good sex is impossible to write about. Lawrence and Updike have given it their all, and the result is still uneasy and unsure. It may be that good sex is something fiction just can't do -- like dreams. Most of the sex in my novels is absolutely disastrous. Sex can be funny, but not very sexy.

After a lifetime of hounding authors for advice, I've heard three truths from every mouth: (1) Writing is painful -- it's 'fun' only for novices, the very young, and hacks; (2) other than a few instances of luck, good work only comes through revision; (3) the best revisers often have reading habits that stretch back before the current age, which lends them a sense of history and raises their standards for quality.

The sole agents, indeed, in the action of her novels are individual human beings. And the comedy is the outcome of their making fools of themselves and of one another.

Algernon Blackwood, Robert Bloch, August Derleth, William Hope Hodgson, Frank Belknap Long, Clark Ashton Smith

Memoirists are our contemporary mythmakers.

Bean mentions that the tree does not flower until 30 to 40 years of age. American references have stated 10 to 14 years. All authors, including this one, tend to pass along time-honored information without determining, first hand, the actual response in question.

He read through Dickens, Thackeray, Hardy, Austen, and Trollope, then moved on to the Continent to read through much of Balzac, Zola, and Flaubert, then fell in love with Tolstoy. His favorite was Goethe; he must have read The Sorrows of Young Werther at

He read through Dickens, Thackeray, Hardy, Austen, and Trollope, then moved on to the Continent to read through much of Balzac, Zola, and Flaubert, then fell in love with Tolstoy. His favorite was Goethe; he must have read The Sorrows of Young Werther at least half a dozen times.

Ovi pisari srednjoškolskih ?itanki naro?ito su odabrani kameleoni koji blistaju mijenjanjem svoje farbe po na?elu rentabiliteta.

The great authors were great readers, and one way to understand them is to read the books they read.

All self-help authors are like babysitters. Because they have to lead and nurture us until we are mentally fit to accomplish anything in life.

One book makes a complete religion. Let the future authors aim for quality rather than quantity.

There are also some moving sections about World War II in Anthony Burgess's Any Old Iron, Nora Okja Keller's Comfort Woman, Kit Reed's At War As Children, Chang-rae Lee's A Gesture Life, Empire of the Sun by J. G. Ballard, and Nancy Willard's Things Invisible to See.

There being no international copyright laws, "pirated" editions abounded, with no complaint from the public, or much from authors, who were lionized.