An author entices the readers with their words, and it is painful for them to even lose a sentence. But films and books are two different mediums and should be dealt differently. What works in a book might not work for a film. When I saw 'Anna Karenina' on screen, I didn't like it at all, whereas 'The Godfather' was legendary.
Sweden is a small country, and a Swedish writer can barely make a living as an author. We were able to quit our jobs as journalists only after we had been translated into, among others, German.
The attitude of, 'I will never self-publish,' coming from any author, indicates that they have never been in a position where it is their only option.
I have never been a fan of science fiction. For me, fiction has to explore the combinatorial possibilities of people interacting under the constraints imposed by our biology and history. When an author is free to suspend the constraints, it's tennis without a net.
I have never met an author who did not read voraciously as a child.
I knew that Steve Harvey had a good, solid message to share, and I wanted to use my knowledge and skills as a relationship author to help him bring his message to those who were willing to receive it.
An author is somebody who writes a story. It doesn't matter if you're a kid or if you're a grown-up, it doesn't matter if the book gets published and lots of people get to read it, or if you make just one copy and you share that book with one friend.
The problem is that in order to publish a book in mainland China, you have to agree to be subject to censorship. That's the nature of the system. I don't challenge that system on its face. It's their system. But as an author, I have a choice to make whether I'll participate or I won't.
I wrote a novel, Ghost Road Rules, and as soon as it was done and polished, I began reaching out to agents. I ignored the frequent advice to 'shoot low and try for a low-level agent because they're the only ones that will take a flyer on a new author.' That sounded like bad advice to me.
A relationship book I once read told women to use the word 'fun' whenever possible. The author claimed it had a subliminal aphrodisiac effect on men, who want a relaxed girl attached only to good times - the human equivalent of Diet Coke. This is not me.
If you're writing a scene for a character with whom you disagree in every way, you still need to show how that character is absolutely justified in his or her own mind, or the scene will come across as being about the author's views rather than about the character's.
As a trial lawyer in front of a jury and an author of true-crime books, credibility has always meant everything to me. My only master and my only mistress are the facts and objectivity. I have no others.
I've been reading 'The Sisterhood,' and I love the author Bobbie Houston and what she's about. It's the whole idea of women celebrating each other's wins and journeying through life together.
I wanted to do 'Texas Trilogy' on stage. But it didn't do well in New York. In fact, it did very badly there, thanks to the critics. It was said that Preston Jones, the author, died of ulcer complications, but the truth was that the critics killed him.
For me, titles are either a natural two-second experience or stressful enough to give you an ulcer. If they don't pop out perfect on the first try, they can be really hard to repair. Or, worse, if the author thinks they pop out perfect, but the publishing house does not agree, it's difficult to shift gears. And then? Then you go insane.
An unread author is an author who is a victim of the worst kind of censorship, indifference - a censorship more effective than the Ecclesiastical Index.
I have always wondered why the movie industry was so firmly persuaded that the original author could be of no possible help in the case of a remake or any other change in a work.
For me, it always comes back to the blogger, the author, the designer, the developer. You build software for that core individual person, and then smart organisations adopt it and dumb organisations die.
The first author I met socially was Joyce Cary.
Bad reviews are the bane of an author's post-publication existence.
According to my parents, I was supposed to have been a nice, churchgoing Swiss housewife. Instead I ended up an opinionated psychiatrist, author and lecturer in the American Southwest, who communicates with spirits from a world that I believe is far more loving and glorious than our own.
In my first 15 or 20 years of authorship, I was almost never asked to give a speech or an interview. The written work was supposed to speak for itself, and to sell itself, sometimes even without the author's photograph on the back flap.
I feel lucky I didn't become that newspaper cartoonist I wanted to be because in the U.S. so many newspapers have suffered circulation declines, and some have folded. What's fun about being an author is I reach a much bigger audience, and there is something special about launching a book you've penned.
I was a very happy banker, but I feel happier as an author.
As a children's author, reviewers are generally very nice to you. I only ever wrote one adult book and received such a kicking for it that I was in trauma for the next six months.
What had brought me to New York in the autumn of 1972 was a letter of recommendation written by Norman Mailer, the author of 'The Naked and the Dead' and American literature's leading heavyweight contender, to Dan Wolf, the delphic editor of 'The Village Voice.'
The author may not interpret. But he must tell why and how he wrote his book.
Margaret Atwood was the author who took me out of children's literature and guided me towards adult literature.
I am astonished, when I pause to think about it, to discover myself to be an author of humorous novels for children. Or an author at all. I had a childhood much like everyone else's. What went wrong?
I remain convinced that the most valuable use of time for a newly published author is to write a second book that's even better than the first, and a third that's better than the second, and on and on.
I believe that it's an author's job to cast his imagination into the far spaces. Your life should - and I think it's inescapable that it will - inform your work. I'm all for using anything that can make your art better, but your intuition should be an equal partner.
Author tours used to have a sense of excitement and pleasure, a sense of occasion. I remember stores having a table with wine and food. It was just a real evening.
The royalty any author gets is dependent on his track record and marketability and often on the price of his book, too. The higher you price a book, the more comfortable your publisher will be in paying you a higher royalty.
My typical morning involves some time on the treadmill, but obviously I skip that a lot. Mostly, I wake up, check my email, then get to work on the various interviews and questions and phone calls that come with being an author.
No one likes to feel helpless. We find it psychologically unbearable and inside ourselves we may try to make ourselves part author of our misfortune rather than simply the recipient of it.
My favorite aspect of being an author has always been visiting different communities and meeting my readers face to face.
