Quotes about Authorship

Writing involves seeing people suffer and, as Robert Stone once put it, finding some meaning therein.

Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her. (Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said you can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.)

I honestly think in order to be a writer, you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here?

Reader loyalty will stay because I'm not changing.

The writer] can easily foresee his fate ... in an age when an author who wants to have readers must take care to write in such a way that the book can easily be perused during an afternoon nap ....

Be careful not to complain about anything, even the weather, since I am the Author of your circumstances. The best way to handle unwanted situations is to thank Me for them. This act of faith frees you from resentment and frees Me to work My ways into the situation, so that good emerges from it. To

Honest to God, Bill, the way things are going, all I can think of is that I'm a character in a book by somebody who wants to write about somebody who suffers all the time.

Writers of all kinds are manacled servants of the public. We write frankly and fearlessly, but then we 'modify' before we print.

Luther always maintained that he was probably born in 1484, but neither Luther nor even his own mother could be sure, and current reckoning puts it more likely at either 1482 or 1483, with the preponderance of evidence favoring the latter, so that in the course of this book we shall use that year.

When I want to read a book, I write one.

When I want to read a novel, I write one.

When I want to read a good book I write one.