Quotes About Authorship

When I lay down the pen the taper of life will expire: my existence will terminate my tale.

I kept waiting for the book to appear. The wait grew more frustrating when my son entered school and was taught the same things I had been taught, beliefs I knew had long been sharply questioned. Since nobody else appeared to be writing the book, I finally decided to try it myself. Besides, I was curious to learn more. The book you are holding is the result.

I only know that it was, and ceased to be; and that I have written, and there I leave it.

Don't be afraid! We won't make an author of you, while there's an honest trade to be learnt, or brick-making to turn to.

His high spiced wares were made to sell, and they sold; and his thousands of readers could as rationally charge their delight in filth upon him, as a glutton can shift upon his cook the responsibility of his beastly excess.

It is the fate of all authors or chroniclers to create imaginary friends, and lose them in the course of art.

Having some foundation for believing, by this time, that nature and accident had made me an author, I pursued my vocation with confidence. Without such assurance I should certainly have left it alone and bestowed my energy on some other endeavour. I should have tried to find out what nature and accident really had made me, and to be that, and nothing else.

He'd write letters by the ream, if it was a capital offence!

I never thought, when I used to read books, what work it was to write them.... It's work enough to read them sometimes.... As to the writing, it has its own charms.

I have nothing else to tell; unless, indeed, I were to confess that no one can ever believe this narrative, in the reading, more than I have believed it in the writing.

Any fool can write a book, and most of them are doing it

Any fool can write a book and most of them are doing it; but it takes brains to build a house.

Two most important things in a writer's wallet: library card and poetic license.

A well-read writer, with good taste, is one who has the command of the wit of other men; he searches where knowledge is to be found; and though he may not himself excel in invention, his ingenuity may compose one of those agreeable books, the deliciæ of literature, that will out-last the fading meteors of his day.

He lik'd those literary cooks Who skim the cream of others' books; And ruin half an author's graces, By plucking bon-mots from their places...

[B]ut in literature, it should be remembered, a thing always becomes his at last who says it best, and thus makes it his own.

I sometimes think it is because they are so bad at expressing themselves verbally that writers take to pen and paper in the first place

Patents Act, 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this

When anything goes digital, let alone something as immaterial as a book, there is a tendency to see it as just in the air to be taken, and to lose the sense that somebody once made it.

There are two authors of every biblical book: the human author who penned the words, and the divine Author who revealed and inspired every word. While God did not dictate the words to the biblical writers, he did guide their minds so that they wrote their own words under the influence of the Holy Spirit.

A writer is a person who has solutions for which there are no riddles.

Authors, such as William Zinsser, Steven Pinker, Natalie Goldberg, and Stephen King, who have all written exquisite books on the art and craft of writing, have reminded me that it is the commitment to the craft that matters the most; the longing to get better and the countless hours of work that go into writing and rewriting. To them I am eternally grateful.

Writing is a psychological process. It is the process of taking what is in your mind and sharing it with others.