Quotes About Authorship

A man who writes a book, thinks himself wiser or wittier than the rest of mankind; he supposes that he can instruct or amuse them, and the publick to whom he appeals, must, after all, be the judges of his pretensions.

The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers.

It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.

It is all work, and my inducement to it is not love or desire of fame, but the want of money, which is the only motive to writing that I know of.

Any mistakes that may remain are, of course, my responsibility.

There's a moment in every book when the story and characters are finally there; they come to life, they're in control. They do things they're not supposed to do and become people they weren't meant to be. When I reach that place, it's magic. It's a kind of rapture.

I've written whole books in order to avoid writing other books.

Our job as a writer is to represent the world and to bear witness to it.

One of the paradoxes of writing is that when you write non-fiction everyone tries to prove that it's wrong, and when you publish fiction, everyone tries to see the truth in it.

The principle of biblical inerrancy follows logically from this principle of divine authorship. After all, God cannot lie, and he cannot make mistakes. Since the Bible is divinely inspired, it must be without error in everything that its divine and human authors affirm to be true. This means that biblical inerrancy is a mystery even broader in scope than infallibility, which guarantees for us that the Church will always teach the truth concerning faith and morals.

Being an author sucks, doesn't it? It's like telling a joke and nobody laughs for two years.

I wrote the book almost unconsciously, like a somnambulist, and was amazed when I realized what I had done.

In many points, both literary and moral, I could have wished devoutly that he had not written as he has done;

The Snow Leopard's Tale is mesmeric. Tom McIntyre has compressed so many things into so few pages that I can think of only a few other short books that can compare. It was worth the wait for all of us who look forward to reading anything with his name under the title.

The history will necessarily include a great deal of pre-history, as I explain how biblical books were composed, since few if any are the result of simple composition by one author: most are highly composite, and some even depend on others, so that there is a process of reception of older books going on in younger ones.

Printed Hebrew Bibles all derive from a single eleventh-century manuscript, whereas all printed New Testaments are based on the comparison of various different manuscripts. The

There isn't, unfortunately, any way of discovering whether you can write a publishable novel except by writing it.

McLuhan, for one, was convinced that all efforts to preserve the old forms of author protection represent backward thinking and are doomed to failure

One page a day, seven a week, thirty or thirty-one to the month. Fishing in his pocket for a tip, he came up with his pen, a thick black fountain pen. Fountain: it seemed less flowing, less forthcoming than that, in shape more like a bullet or a bomb. ("Novelty")

All mankind is of one Author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated.

He that desires to print a book, should much more desire, to be a book.

I don't have traceable literary models because I haven't had great literary influences in my life.

As the writer you are the puppet-master and can control everything. Believe me, that is a whole lot of fun because it ain't something that's going to be happening very often in real life!

I have never had a point in my life to make. I'm just trying to entertain the reader.