Quotes About Authorship

God will finish what He authors, but He is not obligated to finish what He has not authored.

O God, let me write books! Please, God, let me write books!

I didn't know I was really a writer until I read it in the New York Times. And then I thought, "Oh my god, maybe I can really do this". That was a review of "Margaret."

God is an author, and we are His best story.

That's what a writer does; they make things up and that makes for good reading.

The main thing is that you have a good editor - one that believes in you and who will give you the feedback that you need to produce a good book.

Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications.

I always assume that a good book is more intelligent than its author. It can say things that the writer is not aware of.

You can't be a good writer without being a good thinker.

Good writing comes from good talent.

Who learns most from a good book is the author.

There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.

Bad writers have influences. Good writers steal.

I like a good story well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.

Catch me on a good day, I think half of my books aren't too bad. Catch me on a bad day, I think I've never written a good line.

How many words a day do I write? Between six and seven thousand. And how many hours does that take? Three on a good day, as high as thirteen on a bad one

And I'm a slow writer: five, six hundred words is a good day. That's the reason it took me 20 years to write those million and a half words of the Civil War.

I used to be able to write five pages a day, every day, no problem. Now a good day is five or four pages, and that's from 9:30 A.M. until 6 P.M.

You don't have to be a good person to be a good writer--history shows it's better if you're not--but you have to understand your badness.

Nobody ever got started on a career as a writer by exercising good judgment, and no one ever will, either, so the sooner you break the habit of relying on yours, the faster you will advance.

Usually people who do bad things make good writers.I did a lot of bad things, which is why my novels are interesting.

Good writing is formed partly through plan and partly through accident.

In addition to comedy, I'm a writer. I write checks. They're not very good.

The same common sense which makes an author write good things, makes him dread they are not good enough to deserve reading.