54 Authorship Quotes

A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously.

I do have two data identities. I have my name, Bruce Sterling, which is my public name under which I write novels. I also have my other name, which is my legal name under which I own property and vote.

It is not my fault that certain so-called bohemian elements have found in my writings something to hang their peculiar beatnik theories on.

It's sometimes discouraging to see all of a director's movies, because there's so much repetition. The auteurists took this to be a sign of a director's artistry, that you could recognize his movies. But it can also be a sign that he's a hack.

The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.

Either criticism is no good at all (a very defensible position) or else criticism means saying about an author the very things that would have made him jump out of his boots.

An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.

Ok, I admit it. I was just a front-man for the real fathers of Linux, the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus.

For such kind of borrowing as this, if it be not bettered by the borrower, among good authors is accounted Plagiare.

I have become an enthusiast for the printed word again. I have to be that, I now understand, because I want to be a character in all of my works. I can do that in print. In a movie, somehow, the author always vanishes. Everything of mine which has been filmed so far has been one character short, and that character is me.

This is the essence of the transaction between storyteller and audience. The 'true' story is not the one that exists in my mind; it is certainly not the written words on the bound paper that you hold in your hands. The story in my mind is nothing but a hope; the text of the story is the tool I created in order to try to make that hope a reality. The story itself, the true story, is the one that the audience members create in their minds, guided and shaped by my text, but then transformed, elucidated, expanded, edited, and clarified by their own experience, their own desires, their own hopes and fears.

The Bible, it seems certain, was the work of sand-strewn men and women who thought the earth was flat and for whom a wheelbarrow would have been a breathtaking example of emerging technology.[2]

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

When one reads any strongly individual piece of writing, one has the impression of seeing a face somewhere behind the page. It is not necessarily the actual face of the writer. I feel this very strongly with Swift, with Defoe, with Fielding, Stendhal, Thackeray, Flaubert, though in several cases I do not know what these people looked like and do not want to know. What one sees is the face that the writer ought to have. Well, in the case of Dickens I see a face that is not quite the face of Dickens's photographs, though it resembles it. It is the face of a man of about forty, with a small beard and a high colour. He is laughing, with a touch of anger in his laughter, but no triumph, no malignity. It is the face of a man who is always fighting against something, but who fights in the open and is not frightened, the face of a man who is generously angry - in other words, of a nineteenth-century liberal, a free intelligence, a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls.

I think it would be so great if more people took up silk screening,so that no one would know whether my picture was mine or somebody else.

That proves it's not by Shaw, because all Shaw's characters are himself: mere puppets stuck up to spout Shaw.

This book is in every way except actual authorship Alice Toklas's book; it reflects her mind, her language, her private view of Gertrude, also her unique narrative powers. Every story in it is told as Alice herself had always told it....Every story that ever came into the house eventually got told in Alice's way, and this was its definitive version.

A French critic cleverly wrote that 'with Autumn Sonata Bergman does Bergman.' It is witty but unfortunate. For me, that is. I think it is only too true that Bergman (Ingmar, that is) did a Bergman... I love and admire the filmmaker Tarkovsky and believe him to be one of the greatest of all time. My admiration for Fellini is limitless. But I also feel that Tarkovsky began to make Tarkovsky films and that Fellini began to make Fellini films. Yet Kurosawa has never made a Kurosawa film. I have never been able to appreciate Bunuel. He discovered at an early stage that it is possible to fabricate ingenious tricks, which he elevated to a special kind of genius, particular to Bunuel, and then he repeated and varied his tricks. He always received applause. Bunuel nearly always made Bunuel films.

John Barnes is incredibly variable. Pete's Rule (Never buy a Barnes with sodomy in it) is a good one but unfortunately the publisher does not put that kind of stuff on the cover.

If the pages of this book contain some successful verse, the reader must excuse me the discourtesy of having usurped it first. Our nothingness differs little; it is a trivial and chance circumstance that you should be the reader of these exercises and I their author.

Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich's June 1, 1997 column, commonly referred to as 'Wear sunscreen', was widely attributed to a commencement address made by Kurt Vonnegut at M.I.T.

But I hope that in the lives of [the characters], you will find stories worth holding in your memory, perhaps even in your heart. That's the transaction that counts more than best-seller lists, royalty statements, awards, or reviews. Because in the pages of this book, you and I will meet one-on-one, my mind and yours, and you will enter a world of my making and dwell there, not as a character that I control, but as a person with a mind of your own. You will make of my story what you need it to be, if you can. I hope my tale is true enough and flexible enough that you can make it into a world worth living in.

Vous y trouverez le langage doux et aggreable, d'une naifve simplicite, la narration pure, et en laquelle la bonne foy de l'autheur reluit evidemment, exempte de vanite parlant de soy, et d'affection et d'envie parlant d'autruy : ses discours et enhortemens, accompaignez, plus de bon zele et de verite, que d'aucune exquise suffisance, et tout par tout de l'authorite et gravite, representant son homme de bon lieu, et eleve aux grans affaires.

I have to make it clear, however, that I haven't seen the whole film except for 20 minutes of the second part although I know the screenplay very well because Russians have a custom of making an extra copy for the author.

I did not write those letters. This has been a hoax that I've had nothing to do with. I'm sorry it's gone on as long as it has.

Neither is it accidental that the Upanishads contain no internal evidence as to when, where or by whom they were composed. Their very thesis is that we dwell in the midst of a timeless eternity. With everything so indissolubly united that particular areas or places are of no concern. Who might be the author of an idea or a way of communicating it must be of no importance whatsoever, since truth is truth.

(To Ric Flair) Nature Boy, it's me, Mick Foley. I'm gonna send this message out to you directly. I guess it's a rebuttal of sorts in return for the claims you made against me two weeks ago on RAW. The first claim I'd like to address is that I took the easy way out in everything during my entire career, a claim that strikes me as quite odd, coming from a guy who's claim to authorship consisted solely of talking out the side of his ass while drinking heavily for a couple of days, having a professional ghost writer record the conversations and then write down things in a book, and then Ric Flair of course slaps his name on the cover of that book and calls himself an author. Strikes me as being funny seeing as how I actually spent months laboring for hundreds of hours, seven hundred and sixty pages of handwritten notebook paper pouring my heart and soul out to what would become a New York Times number one bestseller, a towering bestseller, Have a Nice Day, in which I made claims that Ric Flair may have been a less than ideal person to work for back in the mid 1990s in WCW. You see, Ric, I wanna bring you back to a time, Munich, Germany, in March of 1994 when you were my boss. Who's kidding who, Ric? You were in charge of my career! And on that night, I got my head tangled up in ropes that were a little bit too tight. I saw blood spattering on the blue mats outside. And I got back inside that ring and I threw a punch and you know what happened? My ear fell off! It fell to the ground! And by some fluke, a referee who spoke no English picked it up, handed it off to a ring announcer who tip-toed to the back. He handed it to you, Ric Flair, and said 'I've got Cactus Jack's ear,' (Remember that name, Ric?) 'What do you want me to do with it?' And Ric Flair suggested we put that ear in a bag of ice. And then Ric, you went outside and you know what you saw? Me! In the ring! Still wrestling! Does that strike you as the easy way out?! I'm a guy who travelled a thousand miles round-trip every week to learn this trade! Slept in my car! Dined on peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches 'til I felt like puking! To learn, from the bottom up, and then I get accused of not knowing how to wrestle by a guy who's main wrestling hold these days is touching another man's genitalia! Oh yeah, heading into Vengeance, Ric, I hadn't been in fear of another man since I had been an alter boy. And then you had the nerve to say oh, you've wrestled every bad-ass there is, and I'm not one of 'em! Well tell me this, Ric, how much worse could they have messed you up? These imaginary bad-asses from your past. How much worse could they have made you bleed? How much more could your family have cried? And now you wanna stand there and say 'when you get in the ring with me it's gonna be all night long, all day long.' Find a new cliche, you used up hack! Because on that day, when I saw your family cry, the space you occupied in my mind for fourteen years was gone. You no longer matter to me, Ric. You brag about your sixteen titles all you want, but I got titles of my own that count. I'm the hardcore legend! I'm a three-time WWE Champion! I'm a two-time New York Times number one bestselling author written by hand! With my mind, my heart, my desire! I've been interviewed twice by Katie Couric, and I'm a personal friend of Melina. And you, Ric Flair, whether you like it, WOOO!, or whether you don't, learn to live with it, because you get no rematch. YOU'RE OUT OF MY LIFE, YOU WASHED UP PIECE OF CRAP! YEAH~!

Floating around the Internet these days, posted and e-mailed back and forth, are a number of writings attributed to me, and I want people to know they're not mine. Don't blame me. Some are essay-length, some are just short lists of one and two-line jokes, but if they're flyin' around the Internet, they're probably not mine. Occasionally, a couple of jokes on a long list might have come from me, but not often. And because most of this stuff is really lame, it's embarrassing to see my name on it. And that's the problem. I want people to know that I take care with my writing, and try to keep my standards high. But most of this 'humor' on the Internet is just plain stupid. I guess hard-core fans who follow my stuff closely would be able to spot the fake stuff, because the tone of voice is so different. But a casual fan has no way of knowing, and it bothers me that some people might believe I'd actually be capable of writing some of this stuff.

I don't pretend to be an author or to know anything about writing. I'm doing this simply because Dr Reilly asked me to, and somehow when Dr Reilly asks you to do a thing you don't like to refuse.

And that is a story that no one can beat, When I say that I saw it on Mulberry Street.

An author is known by the worlds he creates. The measure of his greatness is the degree of clarity and the consistency with which he builds his spirit's habitation, the depth and height it offers the reader who enters it. Eleanor Farjeon's world is construed of fantasy, romance, and an abounding yea-saying joy in the experience of life. It is the stuff that dreams are made of, and as dangerous as dynamite except for those who have genius in their blood, a compassionate heart, a sense of wonder at the multitudinous miracles to be met in one day's living in this world, and the blessed proportion of wit, humor and nonsense. All these she has.

Why do people always expect authors to answer questions? I am an author because I want to ask questions. If I had answers, I'd be a politician.

Poe is the only impeccable writer. He was never mistaken.

Did one man write Shui Hu Chuan, or did it grow to its present shape, added to, rearranged, deepened and developed by many minds and many a hand, in different centuries? Who can now tell? They are dead. They lived in their day and wrote what in their day they saw and heard, but of themselves they have told nothing.

Out of this folk mind, turned into stories and crowded with thousands of years of life, grew, literally, the Chinese novel. For these novels changed as they grew. If, as I have said, there are no single names attached beyond question to the great novels of China, it is because no one hand wrote them. From beginning as a mere tale, a story grew through succeeding versions, into a structure built by many hands.

When it is known that Plato put his own words in Socrates' mouth (Aristotle says this) there should be no reason to doubt that he could have put his own words into other mouths too.

L'oeuvre pure implique la disparition elocutoire du poete, qui cede l'initiative aux mots.

The reason authors almost always put a dedication on a book, Annie, is because their selfishness even horrifies themselves in the end.

I don't know of any thing in my book to be criticised on by honourable men. Is it on my spelling? - that's not my trade. Is it on my grammar ? - I hadn't time to learn it, and make no pretensions to it. Is it on the order and arrangement of my book ? - I never wrote one before, and never read very many; and, of course, know mighty little about that. Will it be on the authorship of the book? - this I claim, and I hang on to it, like a wax plaster. The whole book is my own, and every sentiment and sentence in it. I would not be such a fool, or knave either, as to deny that I have had it hastily run over by a friend or so, and that some little alterations have been made in the spelling and grammar; and I am not so sure that it is not the worse of even that, for I despise this way of spelling contrary to nature. And as for grammar, it's pretty much a thing of nothing at last, after all the fuss that's made about it. In some places, I wouldn't suffer either the spelling, or grammar, or any thing else to be touch'd; and therefore it will be found in my own way. But if any body complains that I have had it looked over, I can only say to him, her, or them - as the case may he - that while critics were learning grammar, and learning to spell, I, and 'Doctor Jackson, L.L.D.' were fighting in the wars; and if our hooks, and messages, and proclamations, and cabinet writings, and so forth, and so on, should need a little looking over, and a little correcting of the spelling and the grammar to make them fit for use, its just nobody's business. Big men have more important matters to attend to than crossing their ts-, and dotting their i's-, and such like small things.

The scenery and costumes of 'The Wizard of Oz' were all made in New York - Mr. Mitchell was a New York favorite, but the author was undoubtedly a Chicagoan, and therefore a legitimate butt for the shafts of criticism. So the critics highly praised the Poppy scene, the Kansas cyclone, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, but declared the libretto was very bad and teemed with 'wild and woolly western puns and forced gags.' Now, all that I claim in the libretto of 'The Wizard of Oz' is the creation of the characters of the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, the story of their search for brains and a heart, and the scenic effects of the Poppy Field and the cyclone. These were a part of my published fairy tale, as thousands of readers well know. I have published fifteen books of fairy tales, which may be found in all prominent public and school libraries, and they are entirely free, I believe, from the broad jokes the New York critics condemn in the extravaganza, and which, the New York people are now laughing over. In my original manuscript of the play were no 'gags' nor puns whatever. But Mr. Hamlin stated positively that no stage production could succeed without that accepted brand of humor, and as I knew I was wholly incompetent to write those 'comic paper side-splitters' I employed one of the foremost New York 'tinkerers' of plays to write into my manuscript these same jokes that are now declared 'wild and woolly' and 'smacking of Chicago humor.' If the New York critics only knew it, they are praising a Chicago author for the creation of the scenic effects and characters entirely new to the stage, and condemning a well-known New York dramatist for a brand of humor that is palpably peculiar to Puck and Judge. I am amused whenever a New York reviewer attacks the libretto of 'The Wizard of Oz' because it 'comes from Chicago.''