Thomas Carlyle Quotes

We have not read an author till we have seen his object, whatever it may be, as he saw it.

Thomas Carlyle

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• Object

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Quotes to Explore

• I wanted to be an author for as long as I can remember.

  

  Walter Jon Williams
  • Long
  • Remember
  • Author

• What I hate in fiction is when the author knows better than the characters what they should do.

  

  Pat Barker
  • Hate
  • Better
  • Author

• In the biographical novel, there's only one person involved. I, the author, spend two to five years becoming the main character. I do that so by the time you get to the bottom of Page 2 or 3, you forget your name, where you live, your profession and the year it is. You become the main character of the book. You live the book.

  

  Irving Stone
  • Time
  • Live
  • Character

• I never read about photography.

  

  Sally Mann
  • Never
  • Photography
  • Read

• My grandmother died in childbirth, and my great-aunt lived with us. She had bound feet. She never knew how to read or write.

  

  Wendi Deng Murdoch
  • Great
  • Write
  • Grandmother

• When you have an author and an auteur, it's a difficult and challenging relationship.

  

  Sam Taylor-Johnson
  • You
  • Relationship
  • Difficult

• I am an author, and like many in my profession, I am also a traveling salesman, going all over in an attempt to persuade people to spend twenty-five dollars on a hardcover book by me.

  

  Ian Frazier
  • Book
  • Author
  • Salesman

• I read Carver. Julio Cortazar. Amis's essays. Baldwin. Lorrie Moore. Capote. Saramago. Larkin. Wodehouse. Anything, anything at all, that doesn't sound like me.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • Me
  • Like
  • Sound

• Musical types tend to combine the burden of the author with the burden of the actor.

  

  Iggy Pop
  • Actor
  • Author
  • Musical

• As an author, you're really grateful for the people who are supporting you, but on some other level, that can be a dangerous echo chamber.

  

  Paolo Bacigalupi
  • People
  • You
  • Author

• You can't believe everything you read. I am only six foot three, by the way.

  

  L'Wren Scott
  • Believe
  • Read

• While growing up in Baltimore, Maryland, I dreamed of becoming many things: an archaeologist, an ambassador, an actor, an author.

  

  Karen Hesse
  • Up
  • Growing
  • Actor

• It is difficult to survive as an author in Sweden, so for commercial success, it is good idea to write crime, get yourself translated, and live happily ever after.

  

  Hakan Nesser
  • Good
  • Live
  • Success

• I met this woman who was a hundred, this housekeeper, a hundred years old. I interviewed her. She just told me about her whole life. She's like, 'I can't read, I can't write; I can tell you who I was working for, and I can tell you the year, but who was president?'

  

  Tate Taylor
  • Life
  • Woman
  • Write

• My daughter is not an object to flash around or a prized item to put on display.

  

  Abhishek Bachchan
  • Daughter
  • Object
  • Flash

• Don't classify me, read me.

  

  Carlos Fuentes
  • Me
  • Read
  • Classify

• When I do a workshop, there is always at least one author who comes up afterward and asks if I'll take a look at his or her book and consider blurbing it. For some reason, I can turn someone down in e-mail, but when he or she is looking me in the eye, I cave.

  

  M. J. Rose
  • Book
  • Reason
  • Author

• Obviously there's a lot more to a TV show than just a book... I think adaptations are a bit tricky for the screenwriters because they're worried about upsetting the author.

  

  Zoe Foster Blake
  • Book
  • Think
  • Author

• We all exist in similar systems that mirror and reproduce the same American culture for the most part. What Oscar Wilde said about the lucky author who has a non-literary day job no longer holds, if it ever did. Artists seek validation as much as they seek money. The creation and invention of culture and canon is where most of the trouble lies.

  

  Fady Joudah
  • Money
  • Job
  • American

• Nor should the argument seem strange that taxation may be so high as to defeat its object, and that, given sufficient time to gather the fruits, a reduction of taxation will run a better chance than an increase of balancing the budget.

  

  John Maynard Keynes
  • Argument
  • Defeat
  • Object

• We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them and rise above them.

  

  William Blake
  • Rise
  • Resolve
  • Contradictions

• Mentally, I'm not ever going to go away.

  

  Roger Federer
  • Away

• I sometimes think that when he was at Harvard Law School, Mr. Obama cut class the day they got to the separation of powers, 'cause he seems to consider it not just an inconvenience but an indignity that, although he got 270 electoral votes and therefore gets to be president, he didn't get everything.

  

  George Will
  • President
  • Inconvenience
  • Indignity

• We have not read an author till we have seen his object, whatever it may be, as he saw it.

  

  Thomas Carlyle
  • Author
  • Read
  • Object