,Qué importa el nombre del autor en la portada? Trasladémonos con el pensamiento a tres mil años de aquí. Quién sabe qué libros se habrán salvado de nuestra época, y de quién sabe qué autores...

The truth was, I yearned, in a soul-deep way, to be Sarra. To ‘feel’ that God was so very close, so very concerned with my particular life, so very ready to protect and to love....

A book can never be anything more than the impress of its author’s thoughts; and the value of these will lie either in the matter about which he has thought, or in the form which...

One picks one’s way about through the glass and aluminum doors, the receptionists’ smiles, the lunches with too much alcohol, the openings with more, the mobs of people desperately trying to define good taste in...

And if I’m guilty of having gratuitous sex, then I’m also guilty of having gratuitous violence, and gratuitous feasting, and gratuitous description of clothes, and gratuitous heraldry, because very little of this is necessary to...

The out-dated imagery of sitting over a dusty typewriter staring at blank pages for years is a fallacy and probably designed to keep you from living up to your fullest potential.

The Author To Her BookThou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,Who after birth did’st by my side remain,Till snatcht from thence by friends, less wise than true,Who thee abroad exposed to public view,Made thee in...

Writing is finally about one thing: going into a room alone and doing it. Putting words on paper that have never been there in quite that way before. And although you are physically by yourself,...

Try to be someone upon whom nothing is lost!

I have had my say, as he wished. Now the book belongs, as he points out, to the world he claims to speak for.

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

When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest.

If there’s a will, there’s a way!I feel larger than LIFE–and look up to the stars who shine down on me and have become my own personal cheerleaders….as my fingers tap on my computer late...

We do not wait for inspiration. We work because we’ve jolly well got to. But when all is said and done, we toil at this particular job because it’s turned out to be our particular...

I feel my fear moving away in rings through time for a million years.

Only mothers will ever know the true struggle and sacrifice it takes to create life. Authors come in at a close second.

A writer’s problem does not change. He himself changes and the world he lives in changes but his problem remains the same. It is always how to write truly and, having found what is true,...

Why do you want to become an author? I will accept only one answer. If it is because you feel you can write better than you can do anything else then go ahead and do...

Poetic justice, with her lifted scale,Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs,And solid pudding against empty praise. Here she beholds the chaos dark and deep,Where nameless somethings in their causes sleep,Till genial Jacob,...

I held out my book. It was precious to me, as were all the things I’d written; even where I despised their inadequacy there was not one I would disown. Each tore its way from...

In the end, what makes a book valuable is not the paper it’s printed on, but the thousands of hours of work by dozens of people who are dedicated to creating the best possible reading...

After the third [San Miguel], I am likely to announce that all writing is fantasy anyway: that to set any event down in print is immediately to begin to lie about it, thank goodness; and...

Every article and review and book that I have ever published has constituted an appeal to the person or persons to whom I should have talked before I dared to write it. I never launch...

He showed, in a few words, that it is not sufficient to throw together a few incidents that are to be met with in every romance, and that to dazzle the spectator the thought should...

None of the things I have mentioned can make a foolish man wise or a bad book good. But when they are properly used they remind us that the act of reading is an act...

All is a-swarm with commentaries: of authors there is a dearth.

It may take a decade or two before the extent of Shakespeare’s collaboration passes from the graduate seminar to the undergraduate lecture, and finally to popular biography, by which time it will be one of...

…Shunsuké hated the preoccupation with modern psychology that judged his casual, offhand remarks or his daily actions as betraying his identity or ideas with better clarity than did his highly polished sentences.

The calling of an author is more than just to entertain, but also to share ones experiences with the world.

The birth of a true poet is neither an insignificant event nor an easy delivery. Complications generally begin long before the fated soul carries its dubious light into whatever womb has been kind enough to...

Who can say they saw a whole play or read a whole book? Each has their own experience, their own play, their own book

You have what I can afford to give. You are a panhandler, begging for anything, and I am the man walking briskly by, tossing a quarter or so into your paper cup. I can afford...

When I write, my soul sings.

From my boyhood I have had an intense and overwhelming conviction that my real vocation lay in the direction of literature. I have, however, had a most unaccountable difficulty in getting any responsible person to...

Somebody told me I’m a writer. I believed them. Now I regret it.

To lead and live the life of your dream, you must arise and be in-charge of the authorship of your own destiny.

Just aiming a speely input device, or a Farspark chambre, or whatever you call it… a speelycaptor… at something doesn’t collect what is meaningful to me. I need someone to gather it in with all...

No one writes anything worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject.

I ran across an excerpt today (in English translation) of some dialogue/narration from the modern popular writer, Paulo Coelho in his book: Aleph.(Note: bracketed text is mine.)… ‘I spoke to three scholars,’ [the character says...

Creative work is often driven by pain. It may be that if you don’t have something in the back of your head driving you nuts, you may not do anything. It’s not a good arrangement....

If you can still write in spite of the fact that you’re not getting paid, that nobody cares about what you’re writing, that nobody wants to publish it, that everybody is telling you to do...

There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject’s sake, and those who write for writing’s sake. […] The truth is that when an author begins to write for...

Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress truth.