Author Quotes
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One shouldn't ever be conscious of the author as lecturer. When social or moral points are too heavily stressed, I always get uncomfortable.
Orson Welles
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Each book tends to have its own identity rather than the author's. It speaks from itself rather than you. Each book is unlike the others because you are not bringing the same voice to every book. I think that keeps you alive as a writer.
E. L. Doctorow
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The Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, said an eminent scholar, have God for their Author, the Salvation of mankind for their end, and Truth without any mixture of error for their matter.
Adam Clarke
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The Egyptian philosophers ventured on the perilous task of seeking out some analogy to the mode of operation employed by the Author of Nature in the first creation of organized beings, and they compared it to that which governs the birth of new individuals by generation.
Charles Lyell
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Creativity runs across many categories in life, from the arts-and-crafts project a mum or dad does with their kids, to the bestselling author's manuscript, to the designs of the hairdresser, to the creations of the computer programming genius.
Tabatha Coffey
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A crime is like a crack in reality, and it is the author's role to explore those cracks. As a writer, I like to see how they impinge on people.
Natsuo Kirino
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It's really a misconception to identify the writer with the main character, given that the author creates all the characters in the book. In certain ways, I'm every character.
Rachel Kushner
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Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.
Jean de la Bruyere
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For correct writing, the cultivation of patience and mental accuracy is essential. Throughout the young author's period of apprenticeship, he must keep reliable dictionaries and textbooks at his elbow; eschewing as far as possible that hasty extemporaneous manner of writing which is the privilege of more advanced students.
H. P. Lovecraft
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All writers, in all viewpoints, must choose which information and scenes will be presented, and in which order. In that sense, the author is always represented as a point of view in a work of fiction. His hand can always be detected by the discerning.
Nancy Kress
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Buy other authors' books when you go to their events. Even if you aren't going to read it. Even if you are going to give it away. Even if you aren't interested. Not just for the author but for the bookstore. It's karma and just plain good manners.
M. J. Rose
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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
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The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.
Samuel Butler
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The listeners who buy books after a reading multiply that reading; the author who realizes that he or she may be writing on a blank page but is at least not speaking to a blank wall may be encouraged by the experience, and write more.
Alberto Manguel
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Unlike the stereotypical author, I've never had a job as a short-order cook, but I love cooking hot breakfasts for lots of people, juggling the eggs and the bacon and the tomatoes and the fried potatoes and so on.
Garth Nix
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In January 1962, when I was the author of one and a half unperformed plays, I attended a student production of 'The Birthday Party' at the Victoria Rooms in Bristol. Just before it began, I realised that Harold Pinter was sitting in front of me.
Tom Stoppard
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The novel that an author writes is often not the novel that the reader reads, and most of the 'messages' in a novel are put there by the reader. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. That's how literature functions.
Ken Liu
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The fact is that at different stages of your life, and under the influence of different inspirations, you write different things. The point is not necessarily to find your voice, which grinds out the same sort of thing again and again, but to find a vehicle for people who are far more important than the author: the characters.
Vikram Seth
