Authors Quotations | Page 3

I've gone to readings to see authors after meeting them on Twitter. And while there, I've found myself sitting next to still more writers who I met on Twitter, too.

Not to say that authors are all such sourpusses, but you meet the author in the best possible way, on the written page. I am at my best there, more patient, more thoughtful.

Social media buzz can lead to huge successes when people spread the word about something they love and want to share. But authors creating their own buzz? Making their own noise? It's hard to make a lot of noise on our own about our own work. Except, sadly, negative noise.

Smart authors, faced with storms, chose to create umbrellas. That's why a diverse group of authors banded together to create The Fiction Writer's Co-op, which will work to find innovative ways to promote each other's work and cheer each other on in a very competitive field.

I'm not one of those authors who claims to hear voices in my head or 'let the characters speak through me,' whatever that might mean.

Indeed, it's not feasible to do the sort of thorough fact-checking that some books may require, in terms of both money and time. We do go back to authors over and over again, getting them to confirm facts and questioning the veracity of their stories, but sometimes it's just not possible.

I know some authors who have gotten $25,000 advances and put it all into marketing, others who allocate $5,000 or $1,000.

I have no problem selling ebooks for authors directly as an agent, but partnering with them is another matter.

In 1 percent of the cases we find authors have engaged in fraud.

I'm working with published authors and some very young undergraduates and lots of people in between. They are lovely people, and they can write.

Interest in graphic novels has exploded, and for good reason ... A new generation of outstanding authors and artists is exploring the form in ways that reach far beyond traditional ideas of the comic book. And a new generation of readers raised on a visual world of movies, TV and video games have adopted the form as their own.

I know one writer who has been subscribing authors without their permission and sending out what she thinks are helpful advice sheets, but they come off as if she's a know-it-all. She thinks she's marketing herself and her work. All she's really doing is turning readers off.

I know dozens of authors who have had a lot of books published by New York, and they won't ever take another Big 6 contract since they've gotten a taste of the freedom, control, and money self-publishing offers.

I know authors shouldn't play favorites with books, but 'Release Me' really is right up there for me. The characters truly came alive on the page and drove the story as much as I did from behind the scenes. It was a pleasure to write, and I'm so thrilled that it's the first of a trilogy because I get to spend more time with the characters.

In my view, the ebook world for both established and new authors is a terrific new and exciting format. It is a format that will bring forth many new writers to publishing.

I have favorite authors from a lifetime of reading, so there are some I'll automatically read every time they have a new novel. Included in them: Robert Goddard, Jeffery Deaver, Sophie Kinsella, Katherine Neville, Greg Isle, Laurie King, Lee Child, Lisa Tucker, Susan Howatch, Paul Auster. Barry Eisler, David Hewson, Tracy Chevalier.

I read reviews and consider myself pretty 'plugged in' to the literary cosmos, yet one of the things I love best about book-touring is the opportunity to compare notes with favorite booksellers around the country. I always come home with books by authors I'd never heard of - or books I've read about but didn't realize I might love.

By and large the literature of a democracy will never exhibit the order, regularity, skill, and art characteristic of aristocratic literature; formal qualities will be neglected or actually despised. The style will often be strange, incorrect, overburdened, and loose, and almost always strong and bold. Writers will be more anxious to work quickly than to perfect details. Short works will be commoner than long books, wit than erudition, imagination than depth. There will be a rude and untutored vigor of thought with great variety and singular fecundity. Authors will strive to astonish more than to please, and to stir passions rather than to charm taste.

Hugh Howey and Amanda Hocking come to mind immediately as authors who managed to build a successful following without the initial support of a large publisher.

I don't think that writing talent has much to do with where one went to school, or the number of degrees on one's business card, but I do get a bit bristly at the implication that romance authors couldn't possibly be smart enough to get into an Ivy League school.

I am a big believer in the fact that all authors really write only one book.

I always write authors after I read their books. I've been doing it for years. I write a formal letter and send it to them in care of their agent. My mother always taught us to write thank you notes, and if an author puts themselves out there, they like to hear that their book connected with someone.

I feel a bit like Ellen Glasgow (I think it was) who said that she was the master and characters did what she said. I'm envious of authors whose characters become so real to them that they take off in their own directions, but my philosophy of teaching, as well as writing, is to demystify the process.

The hard part about questions like this is that SF covers such a broad spectrum. There are so many authors who are good at so many different things.

The difficulty that many foreign authors face in having their works translated into English has effects far beyond the United States.

Agents are deal makers, and they're really, really good at making deals. But they're also exceptionally helpful after the deal is made - agents act as a good intermediary between authors and publishers whenever disagreements come up.

The general public doesn't expect romance authors to be Harvard graduates. Which is funny, because there are actually quite a lot of us. But this disconnect means that journalists see me as an interesting story. The tricky part is making sure they understand that there are many, many talented writers who don't have 'fancy' educations.

The dynamics are such that this is going to happen. The sharpest authors will do the sharpest deals.

The finding would indicate that there are earlier events that are happening that precede the plaque build-up. The authors have demonstrated in animal models that these changes are happening as early as six months before the first signs of plaque accumulation. This seems to be a separate cellular process unlinked to the plaque process.

All the physicians and authors in the world could not give a clear account of his madness. He is mad in patches, full of lucid intervals.

The lives of most authors - even, or perhaps especially, the great ones - are necessarily a catalogue of tedious inwardness and cloistered composition. Globe-trotting Hemingways and brawling Christopher Marlowes are the exception, not the rule.

Were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults in the first.

I was sorry to have my name mentioned among the great authors because they have a sad habit of dying off

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. The quotations, when engraved upon the memory, give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.

Of the innumerable authors whose performances are thus treasured up in magnificent obscurity (in a library), most are forgotten, because they never deserved to be remembered

The most original authors are not so because they advance what is new, but because they put what they have to say as if it had never been said before

Nothing gives an author so much pleasure as to find his works respectfully quoted by other learned authors

I wanted to open the door and broaden the field, ... That allows me the opportunity to do what I like to do most, which is sit and talk to authors about their work. It's kind of hard to do that when they're dead.

How many crimes committed merely because their authors could not endure being wrong!