Quotes About Authorship

If you don't see the book you want on the shelf. Write it

If you don't see a book you want on the bookshelf, write it.

There seemed to be a mystifying universal conspiracy among textbook authors to make certain the material they dealt with never strayed too near the realm of the mildly interesting and was always at least a long-distance phone call from the frankly interesting.

A third...candidate for Shakespearean authorship was Christopher Marlowe. He was the right age (just two months older than Shakespeare), had the requisite talent, and would certainly have had ample leisure after 1593, assuming he wasn't too dead to work.

Only one man had the circumstances and gifts to give us such incomparable works, and William Shakespeare of Stratfrod was unquestionably that man -- whoever he was.

Facts are surprisingly delible things, and in four hundred years a lot of them simply fade away. One of the most popular plays of the age was Arden of Faversham, but no one now knows who wrote it. When an author's identity is known, that knowledge is often marvelously fortuitous.

The marriage license itself is lost, but a separate document, the marriage bond, survives. On it Anne Hathaway is correctly identified. Shakespeare's name is rendered as "Shagspere"—the first of many arrestingly variable renderings.

Although nothing is known about the origin of the painting or where it was for much of the time before it came into the Chandos family in 1747, it has been said for a long time to be of William Shakespeare.

You feelin' me? Word. This is one phat book I'm writing, yo. Recognize.

La dernière chose qu'on trouve en faisant un ouvrage est de savoir celle qu'il faut mettre la première. ( The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in first .)

Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.

When we come across a natural style, we are surprised and delighted; for we expected an author, and we find a man.

The last thing one knows when writing a book is what to put first.

Certain authors, speaking of their works, say: My book, My commentary, My history, etc. They resemble middle-class people who have a house of their own and always have My house on their tongue.

They would do better to say: Our book, Our commentary, Our history, etc., because there is in them usually more of other people's than their own.

Canonical books. The heretics at the beginning of the Church serve to prove the canonical books.

How good is your writing? The best idea in the world has to be supported by solid writing.

those who want the lifestyle of 'author'. They never get published. The ones who want to BE an author make it.

You can market your book, but you can't sell your book. The only book we've ever seen being successfully "sold" by selling methods is the Encyclopedia.

expecting your publisher to promote and push your book is like expecting your OB-GYN to raise your child.

publishing is essentially the same, whether you go traditional or self: write a good book, start writing your next book, get published or self-publish, market, and word of mouth makes or breaks you.

You are the only problem you will ever have and you are the only solution. Change is inevitable, personal growth is always a personal decision.

Alessandra wrote: To label this book Dr. Seuss is too much. He never yet wrote it, nor genius it touched. It's flat, it's pedantic, it leaves children bored, The very things Teddy S. Geisel abhorred. Go read some real Dr. Seuss if you wish. Let these hand-puppet zombies drone on about fish.

write down what I observe in my notebooks. I do this for two reasons. The first is that Writing inculcates habits of precision and carefulness. The second is to preserve whatever knowledge I possess for you, the Sixteenth Person.