Quotes About Authorship

I do not know which of us has written this page.

If a writer disbelieves what he is writing, then he can hardly expect his readers to believe it.

If you're a writer you're bound to write something fine, at least now and then, off and on.

When people write in favor or against anybody, that hardly helps or hurts them...man can be done or undone by his own writing, not by what other people say of him.

Work that endures is always capable of an infinite and plastic ambiguity; it is all things for all men, like the Apostle; it is a mirror that reflects the reader's own features and it is also a map of the world. Moreover, all this must come about in an evanescent and modest way, almost in spite of the author, who must appear to be ignorant of any and all symbolism.

The world unfortunately is real and I, unfortunately, am Borges

En una ocasión le pregunté a Alfonso Reyes por qué publicamos, y Reyes me contestó: «Publicamos para no tener que pasarnos la vida corrigiendo borradores».

Fuera de algunas amistades y de muchas costumbres, el problemático ejercicio de la literatura constituía su vida; como todo escritor, medía las virtudes de los otros por lo ejecutado por ellos y pedía que los otros lo midieran por lo que vislumbraba o planeaba.

All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare.

Work that endures is always capable of an infinite and plastic ambiguity; it is all things for all men[...]and it must be ambiguous in an evanescent and modest way, almost in spite of the author; he must appear to be ignorant of all symbolism.

in the business of writing what one accumulates is not expertise but uncertainties. Which is but another name for craft.

No one can write a book which children will like, unless he write it for himself first. – A. A. Milne

Sleep on your writing; take a walk over it; scrutinize it of a morning; review it of an afternoon; digest it after a meal; let it sleep in your drawer a twelvemonth; never venture a whisper about it to your friend, if he be an author especially.

Jika ingin menjadi seorang penulis pertama sekali kena membaca, kedua kena membaca, ketiga, membaca, keempat membaca dan kelima baru menulis.

One did not have to sell like Hemingway, Davenport, Hale, Rawlings, Weston, or Taylor Caldwell to get Perkins's backing. In fact, his heart went out most readily to the person who desperately desired to be a writer but who could not produce a good book.

Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being.

Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright.

Oviedo, que escribe catorce horas por día, será el conquistador de los conquistadores, el depósito de la verdad. El corral de hechos y personas. Hará con la pluma mucho más de lo que efectivamente hicimos nosotros con la espada. Curioso destino. Pero Jehová mismo no sería Jehová si los judíos no lo hubiesen encerrado en un libro.

Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.

God creates history, while people create an epic or a drama, drawn either from God's history or from unreality and pure fiction.

Out of his pen he was spinning gold.

Don't let someone stealing your quotes !

Another thing that's quite different in writing a book as a practicing newspaperman is that if you look at what you've written the next morning and you think you didn't get it quite right, you can fix it.

Writers are married to their keyboards, as to their passports.