Quotes About Authorship

Anybody can write a good first book, but a writer is proved by the second and by those that follow; you are going to be judged harshly because success in women is not easily forgiven; write what you want; don't allow anybody to interfere with your work or in the handling of your money; treat your children like royalty, they deserve it; get married, because a husband, no matter if he is a moron, looks good.

Dicen que nunca se termina un libro, que simplemente el autor se da por vencido.

When I did the zero draft for Six of Crows,' it was a very organic process.

What five books would I like to be remembered for? Well... Tau Zero, I like that one especially. It was somewhat of a tour de force, and I think it got across what I was trying for.

I had no idea that 'Less Than Zero' was going to be read by anyone outside of Los Angeles, and it's - believe me, as the writer of the book I'm somewhat amused and intrigued by the idea that 25 years later it's still out and people are still reading it.

Those writers that have zero say in their movie adaptations have zero say because they sell it. If you don't sell it, and you do it yourself, and you wait until the screenplay is ready, you don't have to worry about that.

Writers aren't in competition with one another. It isn't a zero sum game. If you have a good book, a good cover, a good product description, and a low price, you can sell well.

When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him.

The best work, and of greatest merit for the public, has proceeded from the unmarried or childless men.

It circulated for five years, through the halls of fifteen publishers, and finally ended up with Vanguard Press, which as you can see is rather deep into the alphabet.

Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were printed in a book!

As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.

I feel successful when the writing goes well. This lasts five minutes. Once, when I was number one on the bestseller list, I also felt successful. That lasted three minutes.

Novelists have always had complete freedom to pretty much tell their story any way they saw fit. And that's what I'm trying to do.

The difference between writing a book and being on television is the difference between conceiving a child and having a baby made in a test tube.

There's almost no author alive who isn't weathering the tumultuous changes in the publishing industry.

I don't even have an agent or manager, but rather have a number of associates who I turn to when needed; or conversely when they hear of someone looking for me they'll contact me.

After 'Memory Keeper's Daughter,' it took me a few months to shut out the world. I really had to turn off the Internet and sort of cloister myself away from the world again and sink into that psychic space to write again.

I've thought about writing, but it hasn't happened yet. It's like schoolwork - you start doing your revisions two nights before you're compelled to turn it in.

My job as an author is to tell the story in the best way possible, to make it flow seamlessly and get the reader to keep turning the page.

When I decide to write a story, I don't think too much about what I want it to be, I just let things come naturally and this is how it turns out. It's just how my subconscious works.

I go to bars and restaurants, and I sit and I eavesdrop on people and I watch people in shopping centers and, you know, I read the newspapers and I talk to the Trenton cops, and I just get a lot of information that comes in that somehow turns into a book.

I prefer drawing the things I've written to handing them off to another artist. Turns out I'm a huge control freak - and because I write in thumbnails, the art is already happening by the time I start writing!

I think a man turns into a writer by editing his own texts.