Author Quotes

The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can’t help it.

All worthy work is open to interpretations the author did not intend. Art isn't your pet -- it's your kid. It grows up and talks back to you.

I like words - strike that, I love words.

You should make it hard on yourself to write so you’re easier to read.

It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces and they stagger on, coughing and searching, and finding.

The earth was not perfectly round but pear-shaped. And according to black hole experts, ninety percent of the universe was missing. Still, there was always a circus somewhere.

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

Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being.

And out of a desire essentially to imitate what I was reading, I began to write, like a clever monkey.

A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.

Only the skilled can judge the skilfulness, but that is not the same as judging the value of the result.

Books are for life.  Not just for homework.

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever after.

When in doubt have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.

Writing for me is a kind of compulsion, so I don't think anyone could have made me do it, or prevented me from doing it.

After being turned down by numerous publishers, he had decided to write for posterity.

Reading one book is like eating one crisp.

Choose an author as you choose a friend.

Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear

The prime function of the children's book writer is to write a book that is so absorbing, exciting, funny, fast and beautiful that the child will fall in love with it. [...] The child will have found a crock of gold. He will also have gained something that will help to carry him most marvelously through the tangles of his later years.