Quotes About Authorship

To hold a pen is to be at war.

The only reward to be expected from literature is contempt if one fails and hatred if one succeeds.

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

You have the greatest passion for your book so you need to show that passion and create an email list and different ways to connect with your readers.

The successful writers continue to learn and grow in their craft—and also to grow their audience or tribe or platform.

It's rare that I hear the author blame the real culprit: themselves. It's hard to admit but it's the first step toward selling more books and understanding who bears the true responsibility for selling books—the author.

As a book author, it's your responsibility to cast a vision for your book about the length and appearance before you pitch the idea to a publisher.

I have to thank Messrs. Macmillan, and the editors of Belgravia, All the Year Round, and Monthly Packet, for leave to quote from Patrick Kennedy's Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts, and Miss Maclintock's articles respectively; Lady Wilde, for leave to give what I would from her Ancient Legends of Ireland (Ward & Downey); and Mr. Douglas Hyde, for his three unpublished stories

I had hardly begun to read I asked how can you ever be sure that what you write is really any good at all and he said you can't you can't you can never be sure you die without knowing whether anything you wrote was any good if you have to be sure don't write

I took five years on the first volume, five years on the second volume, and ten years on the third volume.

I made straight A's and never got into any trouble, and I still impose those standards on myself. So writing is my chance to escape and become the sleaziest, scummiest role.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

Rittner's Computer Law: Never argue with people who write with digital ink and pay by the kilowatt-hour.

I really like to write, so I can just relax and think about things and realize things and then try to express it on my computer.

I don't really sit at the computer from scratch. I prefer to get my ideas in my fingers and I write longhand first.

I write on a computer, on a laptop or whatever.

I still write with pen and paper and have someone type it on a computer. But rewriting I do by hand.

In college, I had a lot of friends who were writers and wanted to be writers and I felt intimidated by it. I just didn't know if I had any gift or voice and I had no confidence about it.

Confidence is something one acquires. It can come early or late but it is impossible to write without it. Mine came late.

Never fails. Every new book I write seems impossible, writes like I'm typing from dictation, edits like I didn't write it, and finishes like I couldn't possibly have written it.

For me the really cool parts of being an author don't have anything to do with getting onto a bestseller list.

It takes courage to be the author of your life.

To finish is sadness to a writer — a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn't really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done.

Rascal Knockoff. I thought: Dostoyevsky fell in love with him.