Quotes About Authorship

Over the course of time, their successive readings will question and enrich it. Thus the work will no longer belong to the author; he will be dispossessed of it. We could even say that the author will no longer belong to himself either—which corresponds to the most modest and ambitious of dreams he is able to formulate and to the wisest and wildest illusion he can maintain: to ignore age and let time run its course. To write is to die a little, but a little less alone.

People think writing is an easy job, and in some ways it is. Flexible hours, no boss, no real structure . . . but working without any structure is a bit like sailing a boat in the middle of the ocean. All it takes is an unexpected wave and you're dead in the water.

it is hard to discredit the idea that he worked on Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care,

At the rate these illuminations appear, it will no doubt take me a long time to gather the material for even one single book. For my inspired double-- this phantom builder of sentences who maliciously impedes my work to dictate his clever discoveries-- always comes at those (infrequent) hours of his choosing, drafts (at best) three little pages, then goes away.

I long believed that one was born a writer, that it was enough to allow to ripen within oneself for an appropriate number of years this precious seed, and that then one day the first book would appear, as had earlier, at the appointed hour, the first tooth. 53

This and the following Psalm were don by the Author at fifteen yeers old.

the Holy Spirit is the author of this work in us, so that although it is our duty, it is his grace and strength whereby it is performed; as also the manner how it is wrought by him, which is principally intended: [1.]

For certainly it is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them.

My characters were...rebelling against something...My own bad writing. I wouldn't do for my characters what they needed for me to do - be courageous enough in my writing to make them interesting.

Be that as it may, if Stephen King or John Grisham really wanted to (and to be clear, I don't suspect they do), they could probably whip up a book comprised entirely of reviews of their own intestinal emanations ("A Bear in the Woods: 25 Years of Squatlogging, 1979-2004")

Perhaps that might be the way to write this book--to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves.

The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of a writer.

To finish is a sadness to a writer- a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done.

I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.

I will go so far as to say that the writer who is not scared is happily unaware of the remote and tantalizing majesty of the medium.

I write because I like to write. I find joy in the texture and tone and rhythm of words. It is a satisfaction like that which follows good and shared love.

I hate traveling and being away from my family. But I like meeting my readers, as what I write is actualized in them. Those encounters are exhilarating to me.

Writing is not "the establishment of a professional reputation" as if one were a doctor or lawyer; it is not properly in the sentence with creation of a family and the purchase of a home.

I consider myself very fortunate indeed to have created a character which has captured the imagination and enthusiasm of so many children worldwide. They are my family, and Spot belongs to them all.

I've enjoyed being a famous writer-except that every once in a while you have to write something.

You Don't Have To Be The Best Writer In The World To Become A Successful Author. However, You Do Need To Sell Lots of Books.

Forever encased in the amber of a writer's prose.

The creative writer does the same as the child at play; he creates a world of fantasy which he takes very seriously.

Ive never seen myself as a fantasy writer-ever.