Quotes About Authors

AUTHORS SHOULD BE READ BUT NOT SEEN; RARELY ARE THEY A WINSOME SIGHT.

I've got an apartment that consists of nothing but books; on the other hand, I don't collect. It's a mania to buy books. I can't go out without buying a book. But it would never occur to me to collect. I collect authors because obviously I want all their work, but this business of first editions and that whole thing doesn't strike me.

Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air,Or laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy chair.

Some judge of authors' names, not works, and thenNor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.

Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true, But are not critics to their judgment, too?

Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.

Authors are partial to their wit

I've stopped reading about the death of books because it's wasteful and morbid and insulting to the authors, agents, publishers, booksellers, critics, and readers that keep the world community of fiction interesting.

Buy other authors' books when you go to their events. Even if you aren't going to read it. Even if you are going to give it away. Even if you aren't interested. Not just for the author but for the bookstore. It's karma and just plain good manners.

As writers, we only aim to please. Or we aimed to please as children, which is why we became writers.

I don't give plots to Harold Robbins or Graham Greene, because they don't need them, but a lot of authors do.

I always tell my students to seek out other writers as models, and though it took me years to heed my own advice, it really was life-altering when I found writers who wrote long stories, full of back story and side plots and sub-histories.

I love Roald Dahl, Sharon Olds, Nizar Qabbani, who is a poet, and Junot Diaz.

I defer to all these other American poets who, for some reason, I both envy and admire.

I put it to you that there are no British poets, there are no British novelists. I have heard myself described as one, but I think really I'm an English novelist; there are Scottish poets and Scottish novelists.

Poetry itself hasn't been well served by poets who fled to the margins.

It's not easy to tell a story about writers and make that feel like a complete story and an interesting story.

I feel like the writers that I'm drawn to, the writers that I really cling to, are the writers who seem to be writing out of a desperate act. It's like their writing is part of a survival kit. Those are the writers that I just absolutely cherish and carry with me everywhere I go.

I will admit, I once launched myself at Julie Garwood for a hug, hoping some of her magic would rub off on me... and I have fangirl crushes on Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Linda Howard, and Kresley Cole, among many others.

I have favorite authors from a lifetime of reading, so there are some I'll automatically read every time they have a new novel. Included in them: Robert Goddard, Jeffery Deaver, Sophie Kinsella, Katherine Neville, Greg Isle, Laurie King, Lee Child, Lisa Tucker, Susan Howatch, Paul Auster. Barry Eisler, David Hewson, Tracy Chevalier.

I'm a huge fan of Alice Hoffman, Fred Chappell and Susan Elizabeth Phillips.

I've had a dozen novels published and have made far more than a dozen mistakes. Which is why Randy Susan Meyers and I wrote a guidebook to help authors avoid making our mistakes.

There are 195 crime books published in Sweden every year. You could cut that to 100 and keep the good ones.

When I started writing, the deal was that publishers gave you a grand or two as an advance to buy some sweets, with the promise that they would make a big putsch with your fourth book when you'd built up a bit of a following. But by the time my fourth book came out, previously unpublished authors were the new big thing.