The thing about being a mystery writer, what marks a mystery writer out from a chick lit author or historical fiction writer, is that you always find a mystery in every situation.
It is difficult to get men to pick up a female author. Women will read men, but men won't read women.
There's always a slight tension when you sell a book to Hollywood, especially a nonfiction book. The author wants his story told intact; the nonfiction author wants it told accurately.
I went to SXSW in 2011. God, that was awful. I mean, I only went because my publisher wanted me to promote the book and the organizers invited me and it seemed silly not to go, especially for a relatively unknown first-time author. This is just not my cup of tea; the fewer such events I do on an annual basis, the happier I feel.
Somebody will be able to crack ebook files in the same way that people cracked music files a decade ago. An author could have worked for three years on his book, have someone buy it for their Kindle for £6.99 and then see it shared with everyone in the world for free.
The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.
Hey, over here! Have your picture taken with a reclusive author! Today only, we'll throw in a free autograph! But wait, there's more!
In writing the history of a disease, every philosophical hypothesis whatsoever, that has previously occupied the mind of the author, should lie in abeyance.
Numerous are the posthumous museums and memorials devoted exclusively to one artist, architect or author and designed to preserve or artificially reconstruct the namesake's original working or living conditions.
The prosecutor, who is supposed to carry the burden of proof, really is an author.
Writing is a intensely personal activity. I can pen down my best thoughts when I'm alone. But when one is elevated into the stature of an author, you have to think about your books in terms of their business angle.
I would very much like to become a best-selling author.
Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.
The test of an author is not to be found merely in the number of his phrases that pass current in the corner of newspapers... but in the number of passages that have really taken root in younger minds.
The author of the Gospel of Judas wasn't against martyrdom, and he didn't ever insult the martyrs. He said it's one thing to die for God if you have to do that. But it's another thing to say that's what God wants, that this is a glorification of God.
If modesty and candor are necessary to an author in his judgment of his own works, no less are they in his reader.
Truth is Mormonism. God is the author of it.
Having spent the greater part of my life under a Communist dictatorship, I am very familiar with the Bolshevik mentality according to which an author in general, and an eminent author in particular, is always guilty, and must be punished accordingly.
Readers will stay with an author, no matter what the variations in style and genre, as long as they get that sense of story, of character, of empathetic involvement.
For an author, the nice characters aren't much fun. What you want are the screwed up characters. You know, the characters that are constantly wondering if what they are doing is the right thing, characters that are not only screwed up but are self-tapping screws. They're doing it for themselves.
If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!
We wanted to create an environment where if a game player enjoyed the 'writing style' of a particular game designer, he or she could look for the next game by that same author and not be disappointed.
A memoir is not an autobiography. It's a true story told as a novel, using techniques of novelization. The author is allowed to compress events, combine characters, change names, change the sequence of events, just as if he's writing a novel. But it's got to be true.
I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.
My favourite author is Leon Trotsky - the political philosophy and the way he writes is beautiful, and really relevant, too.
For pity's sake, if you don't take a shine to a novel, there are loads more in the world; read something else. Continue suffering, and it's not the author's fault. It's yours.
Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.
These rough sketches, which are born in an instant in the heat of inspiration, express the idea of their author in a few strokes, while on the other hand too much effort and diligence sometimes saps the vitality and powers of those who never know when to leave off.
An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.
A lot of author events are basically hour-long classes in entropy perched on bad seating under bright, hard lights, with - if you're lucky - bad Chardonnay and cheese on a stick waiting for you at the end of the ride.
In the biographical novel, there's only one person involved. I, the author, spend two to five years becoming the main character. I do that so by the time you get to the bottom of Page 2 or 3, you forget your name, where you live, your profession and the year it is. You become the main character of the book. You live the book.
I was shy. Bookish. The kind of 13-year-old girl who, instead of having a boyfriend, would have a crush on a dead, 19th-century author!
People know that I am a very good author. But they would rather read what I have to say about the next election.
The best books arise from some ultimate question in the author.
I wanted to be an author for as long as I can remember.
It is conceivable that what is unified form to the author or composer may of necessity be formless to his audience.
