Quotes About Authorship

Well,the fun part of being a writer is that it's like making a wonderful film, with no limit on my budget. I can design the sets, the costume, the lightings, I write the script, and then I get to perform all the roles as I step into each character's skin, zip up, and adopt that point of view. So, to me, they are all compelling and fascinating.

My books happen. They tend to blast in from nowhere, seize me by the throat, and howl 'Write me! Write me now!' But they rarely stand still long enough for me to see what and who they are, before they hurtle away again. And so I spend a lot of time running after them, like a thrown rider after an escaped horse, saying 'Wait for me! Wait for me!' and waving my notebook in the air.

You can choose and create the life you want. You are the author of your reality.

Lest any idle person might think that I have had time to write plays during the last few years I may mention that the first act of The Tents of the Arabs was written on September 3rd, and the second act on September 8th, 1910. The first and second acts of The Laughter of the Gods were written on January 29th, and the third act on February 2nd and 3rd, 1911. A Night at an Inn was written on January 17th, 1912, and The Queen's Enemies on April 19, 20, 21, 24, 28, 29, 1913.

If one publishes, then one is creating a public record of Learning to Write.

I like them all. There's bits and pieces of books that I think are good. I never rework a book. I'd rather use what I've learned on the next one, and make it a little bit better. The worst of it is that I'm no longer a kid and I'm just now getting to be a good writer. Just now.

I think I shall write books, and get rich and famous, that would suit me, so that is my favorite dream.

An old maid, that's what I'm to be. A literary spinster, with a pen for a spouse, a family of stories for children, and twenty years hence a morsel of fame, perhaps…

I've had lots of trouble, so I write jolly tales.

The three books I wrote by hand and with a typewriter took less time than the ones I've written using a computer.

Publishers now act as if writing is the same as typing.

Woolf penned roughly 535 words and crossed out 73 of them, netting her 462 words for her day's work. Let's say she worked for three hours. That's about 178 words an hour including the words she deleted—and Woolf was writing at the height of her creative powers.

It didn't occur to me that my books would be widely read at all, and that enabled me to write anything I wanted to. And even once I realized that they were being read, I still wrote as if I were writing in secret. That's how one has to write anyway--in secret.

I'm still not strictly rational. How could I be? I sell books.

The Federalist Papers ran to eighty-five essays, with fifty-one attributed to Hamilton, twenty-nine to Madison, and only five to Jay.

Many people knew that Hamilton, Madison, and Jay were the authors, but the trio proclaimed their authorship to only a chosen few and then mostly after the first bound volume was published in March 1788.

Modern biblical scholars tell us that about 90 percent of the New Testament of the King James Version was ultimately based on Tyndale's work.

Yet just as the sailors were active on the ship (though the wind, not the sailors, ultimately controlled the ship's movement), so the human authors were active in writing as the Spirit directed.

Hemingway said write first and then take out all the good stuff and what's left is story. (By "good stuff" Hemingway meant all the material that the author has fallen in love with—not everything that was proper for the story.)

los escritores escribimos mucho mejor de lo que hablamos)

Ruth was a novelist, and novelists, Oliver asserted, should have cats and books.

Ze truth about stories is that is all we are.' A famous Cherokee writer named Thomas King once said this. We are ze stories we tell ourselves, Benny-boy. We meck ourselves up. We meck each other up, too." I wondered if the Aleph was in his poem, or if I was. That would be weird, to be in someone else's poem, or someone else's book.

borrow them with no intention of returning them. But, Benjamin says, "Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.

literary acts are inherently disembodied, more notional and distributed. We rely on you to embody us, and we exist because you can.