Good Authors Quotes

• To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

  Herman Melville

  Book, Writing, Fleas

  Moby Dick ch. 104 (1851)

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

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Book, Reading, Hero

  1905 Heretics, ch.15.

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• Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but that's the only way you can do anything really good.

  William Faulkner

  Inspiring, Writing, May

  "A Faulkner perspective: a companion-guide to the limited first edition of the Selected letters of William Faulkner".

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• The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wisdom, Writing, Procrastination

  Statement on April 14, 1775. "Life of Samuel Johnson". Book by James Boswell. Volume II, 1791.

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• If you tell the truth you do not need a good memory!

  Mark Twain

  Truth, Honesty, Memories

  Mark Twain, Classics HD (2015). “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: by Mark Twain (Illustrated and Unabridged)”, p.2, Classics HD

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• What I like in a good author is not what he says but what he whispers.

  Logan Pearsall Smith

  Inspirational, Book, Writing

  All Trivia (1933) "Afterthoughts" pt. 5

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• The good author is he who contemplates without marked joy or excessive sorrow the adventures of his soul amongst criticisms.

  Joseph Conrad

  Adventure, Joy, Soul

  Joseph Conrad (2005). “A Personal Record: Some Reminiscences”, p.109, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Good authors mature over time: it does take awhile. Travel abroad and learn to live in other cultures. That's one of the things about teaching abroad.

  Richard K. Morgan

  Teaching, Other Cultures, Doe

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• Let us hope that good authors who are bad Christians will find salvation through the books they write.

  Julien Green

  Christian, Book, Writing

  Julien Green (1964). “Diary, 1928-1957”, London, Collins

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• I think I have done well, if I have acquired a new word from a good author; and my business with him is to find my own, though itwere only to melt him down into an epithet or an image for daily use.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Reading, Thinking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.172, Graphic Arts Books

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• A good author, and one who writes carefully, often discovers that the expression of which he has been in search without being able to discover it, and which he has at last found, is that which was the most simple, the most natural, and which seems as if it ought to have presented itself at once, without effort, to the mind.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Writing, Simple, Expression

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• There are so many good authors; there's no shortage of them.

  Jeanne Calment

  Shortage

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Fundamentally a good author has his or her own sense of style. There is a natural, deep voice, and that voice is present from the first draft of a manuscript. When he or she elaborates on the initial manuscript, it continues to strengthen and simplify that natural, deep voice.

  Kenzaburo Oe

  Voice, Style, Firsts

  "Kenzaburo Oe, The Art of Fiction No. 195". Interviewed with Sarah Fay, www.theparisreview.org. Winter 2007.

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• You don't expect me to know what to say about a play when I don't know who the author is, do you? . . . If it's by a good author, it's a good play, naturally. That stands to reason.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Play, Reason, Knows

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

  John Milton

  Kind, Plagiarism, Borrowing

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• People know that I am a very good author. But they would rather read what I have to say about the next election.

  Tatyana Tolstaya

  People, Next, Election

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• My sole inspiration is a telephone call from a director. ... (when asked who wrote 'Some Enchanted Evening') Rodgers and Hammerstein, if you can imagine it taking two men to write one song. ... Good authors, too, who once knew better words now use only four-letter words writing prose. ... Brush up your Shakespeare and they'll all kowtow.

  Cole Porter

  Song, Inspiration, Writing

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• There is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isn't true!

  Philip Larkin

  Writing, Pity, Converses

  Philip Larkin (2012). “Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica”, Faber & Faber

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• Good authors, too, who once knew better words now only use four-letter words writing prose... anything goes.

  Cole Porter

  Funny, Change, Humorous

  "Anything Goes" (song) (1934)

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• I guess what inspires me most is the desire to draw out feelings that feel best expressed on the written page by really good authors, and I'm not a really good author. I feel like my job as a filmmaker is to eff the ineffable, to take feelings that only poets could describe with words and try to project them on the screen for viewers to feel. I don't think I've succeeded once but in the act of trying I've come up with all these other results which sometimes intrigue me.

  Guy Maddin

  Jobs, Thinking, Inspire

  Source: thequietus.com

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