Authorship Quotes

People's interest is in the product, not in its authorship.

We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.

Whatever hath been written shall remain, Nor be erased nor written o'er again; The unwritten only still belongs to thee: Take heed, and ponder well what that shall be.

The writer, like a priest, must be exempted from secular labor. His work needs a frolic health; he must be at the top of his condition.

Often turn the stile [correct with care], if you expect to write anything worthy of being read twice. [Lat., Saepe stilum vertas, iterum quae digna legi sint Scripturus.]

Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.

Let it (what you have written) be kept back until the ninth year. [Lat., Nonumque prematur in annum.]

No author ever drew a character consistent to human nature, but he was forced to ascribe to it many inconsistencies.

A writer who attempts to live on the manufacture of his imagination is continually coquetting with starvation.

Peaceable times are the best to live in, though not so proper to furnish materials for a writer.

If you agree with some tenets of Objectivism, but disagree with others, do not call yourself an Objectivist; give proper authorship credit for the parts you agree with

Manner is all in all, whate'er is writ,The substitute for genius, sense, and wit.

The familiar writer is apt to be his own satirist. Out of his own mouth is he judged.

There's as much great authorship in the filmmaker community as in the literary community, and I'd love to welcome more filmmakers into the fold.

And hold up to the sun my little taper.

There are both dull correctness and piquant carelessness; it is needless to say which will command the most readers and have the most influence.

Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation td posterity? Let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.

The nobler the truth or sentiment, the less imports the question of authorship.

That author, however, who has thought more than he has read, read more than he has written, and written more than he has published, if he does not command success, has at least deserved it.

I have observed that vulgar readers almost always lose their veneration for the writings of the genius with whom they have had personal intercourse.

All authors to their own defects are blind.

Who left nothing of authorship untouched, and touched nothing which he did not adorn. [Lat., Qui nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit; nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.]

From the moment one sets up for an author, one must be treated as ceremoniously, that is as unfaithfully, "as a king's favorite or a king.

Ye who write, choose a subject suited to your abilities. [Lat., Sumite materiam vestris, qui scribitis, aequam Viribus.]

I think, for me, when I direct my own work it's just an extension of the authorship.

He who proposes to be an author should first be a student.

Of all unfortunate men one of the unhappiest is a middling author endowed with too lively a sensibility for criticism.

But, inevitably, as he [Kierkegaard] approaches what we might call his Christocentric climax many readers drop off. Many scholars just leave that part of his authorship alone.

Nothing is so beneficial to a young author as the advice of a man whose judgment stands constitutionally at the freezing-point.