Authors Note Quotes

Oh, and although I don't particularly like the IRS, I still do not like terrorists and have no desire whatsoever to attack our federal government. This is the United States. If you don't like our government, go out and vote"--From Author's note in "Tax Break ~ Jay Williams

You will have noticed that I didn't give this story a pat conclusion, and that's deliberate. Katherine (my wife and frequent coauthor, K. A. Applegate) and I were among the earliest authors to encounter fan fiction via the internet. We've embraced it from the start. And some part of me hopes that fanfic writers will carry this story forward. Don't ask me what happens to these characters next, because I don't know. Will Dekka find love, perhaps with Simone? Will Cruz and Armo? How will Sam and Astrid do in this terrifying extension of earlier trauma? Maybe you have some ideas. I built the sandbox; if you want to bring your pails and shovels and play in it, cool. It's one of the best things about writing for young people: you are my collaborators in imagination. If I leave blanks it's because I know you'll fill them. ~ Michael Grant

[Author's Note:] It took me four years to research and write this novel, so I began long before talk about migrant caravans and building a wall entered the national zeitgeist. But even then I was frustrated by the tenor of the public discourse surrounding immigration in this country. The conversation always seemed to turn around policy issues, to the absolute exclusion of moral or humanitarian concerns. I was appalled at the way Latino migrants, even five years ago - and it has gotten exponentially worse since then - were characterized within that public discourse. At worst, we perceive them as an invading mob of resource-draining criminals, and at best, a sort of helpless, impoverished, faceless brown mass, clamoring for help at our doorstep. We seldom think of them as our fellow human beings. People with the agency to make their own decisions, people who can contribute to their own bright futures, and to ours, as so many generations of oft-reviled immigrants have done before them. ~ Jeanine Cummins

[Author's Note:] When I was sixteen, two of my cousins were brutally raped by four strangers and thrown off a bridge in St. Louis, Missouri. My brother was beaten and also forced off the bridge. I wrote about that horrible crime in my first book, my memoir, A Rip in Heaven. Because that crime and the subsequent writing of the book were both formative experience in my life, I became a person who is always, automatically, more interested in stories about victims than perpetrators. I'm interested in characters who suffer inconceivable hardship, in people who manage to triumph over extraordinary trauma. Characters like Lydia and Soledad. I'm less interested in the violent, macho stories of gangsters and law enforcement. Or in any case, I think the world has enough stories like those. Some fiction set in the world of the cartels and narcotraficantes is compelling and important - I read much of it during my early research. Those novels provide readers with an understanding of the origins of the some of the violence to our south. But the depiction of that violence can feed into some of the worst stereotypes about Mexico. So I saw an opening for a novel that would press a little more intimately into those stories, to imagine people on the flip side of that prevailing narrative. Regular people like me. How would I manage if I lived in a place that began to collapse around me? If my children were in danger, how far would I go to save them? I wanted to write about women, whose stories a ~ Jeanine Cummins

Author's Note
This is not so much an author's note as an author's reminder of what was printed in small type a few pages ago: This book is a work of fiction. I made it up.
Neither novels or their readers benefit from attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species.
I appreciate your cooperation in this matter. ~ John Green

Editing is a kind of creative activity where, in a perfect world, an author and an editor find that elusive oneness to understand each other intuitively. ~ Sahara Sanders

Author's Note

Then there is the land itself. Our Native people have always believed that the land talks to us when we listen. I have stood on the same ground where Squanto walked three centuries ago, feeling the sea breeze in my face and smelling the smoke from cooking fires, where the same foods he would have eaten were being cooked in the traditional way. As I stood there, I, too, heard the whisper of the earth, a song on the wind reminding me that those ancient voices will never be gone. ~ Joseph Bruchac

Author's Note: This story starts with section 6. This is not a mistake. I have my own subtle reasoning. So, just read, and enjoy. ~ Isaac Asimov

AUTHOR'S NOTE TO READERS: TRUTH OR FICTION Everything in this book is true, except for what's not. I thought I'd end this adventure by splitting those hairs. First, two elements gave birth to this story. I came upon each independently, but I knew there had to be a connection and that Sigma would need to investigate. ~ James Rollins

While Apicius is full of ancient delicacies such as roasted peacock, boiled sow vulva, testicles, and other foods we would not commonly eat today, there are many others that are still popular, including tapenade, absinthe, flatbreads, and meatballs. There is even a recipe for Roman milk and egg bread that is identical to what we call French toast. And, contrary to popular belief, foie gras was not originally a French delicacy. The dish dates back twenty-five hundred years, and Pliny credits Apicius with developing a version using pigs instead of geese by feeding hogs dried figs and giving them an overdose of mulsum (honey wine) before slaughtering them. ~ Crystal King

You can take the girl out of Mississippi but you can't take the Mississippi out of the girl. ~ Kristi Cook

[referencing that what bothered her about Hansel and Gretel was the weak willed father who let the evil stepmother send the children into the woods not once but twice, and the unease of children reunited happily with their father] : In many ways that unease has guided me through these stories, that note of trouble that I think many of us hear in familiar tales, because we know - even as children - that impossible tasks are an odd way to choose a spouse, that predators come in many guises, that a prince's whims are often cruel. The more I listened to that note of warning, the more inspiration I found. ~ Leigh Bardugo

[Author's note:] When I decided to write this book, I worried that my privilege would make me blind to certain truths, that I would get things wrong, as I may well have. I worried that, as a non-immigrant and non-Mexican, I had no business writing a book set almost entirely in Mexico, set entirely among migrants. I wished someone slightly browner than me would write it. But then I thought, 'If you're a person who has the capacity to be a bridge, why not be a bridge?' So I began.

In the early days of my research, before I'd fully convinced myself that I should undertake the telling of this story, I was interviewing a very generous scholar, a remarkable woman who was chair of the Chicana and Chicano studies Department at San Diego State University. Her name is Norma Iglesias Prieto, and I mentioned my doubts to her. I told her I felt compelled, but unqualified, to write this book. She said, "Jeanine. We need as many voices as we can get, telling this story." Her encouragement sustained me for the next four years.

I was careful and deliberate in my research. I traveled extensively on both sides of the border and learned as much as I could about Mexico and migrants, about people living throughout the borderlands. The statistics in this book are all true, and though I changed some names, most of the places are real, too. But the characters, while representative of the folks I met during my travels, are fictional. ~ Jeanine Cummins

The nature and course of the love between man and woman is determined not only by the individual characters of the lovers; it is influenced also by the imapct of their circumstances on them. The river brings down its gushing nature from the mountain-top that gives it birth, but it acquires its distinctiveness from the contour of the land through which it flows. The same is the case with love. On the one hand, there is the inner feeling, on the other, the conflict with outward circumstances. It is the combination of these two factors that gives the complete picture its individuality.
(Author's Note) ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Additionally, Liesl and Po is the embodiment of what writing has always been for me at its purest and most basic
not a paycheck, certainly; not an idea, even; and not an escape. Actually, it is the opposite of an escape; it is a way back in, a way to enter and make sense of a world that occasionally seems harsh and terrible and mystifying. (From the "Author's Note" at the end). ~ Lauren Oliver

[Author's Note:] When my grandmother came to the United States from Puerto Rico in the 1940s, she was a beautiful, glamorous woman from a wealthy family in the capital city, and the young bride of a dashing naval officer. She expected to be received as such. Instead, she found that people here had a very reductionist view of what it meant to be Puerto Rican, of what it meant to be Latinx. Everything about her confused her new neighbors: her skin tone, her hair, her accent, her notions. She wasn't what they expected a boricua to be.

My grandmother spent much of her adult life in the States but didn't always feel welcome here. She resented the perpetual gringo misconceptions about her. She never got past that resentment, and the echoes of her indignation still have some peculiar manifestations in my family today. One of the symptoms is me. Always raging against a perceived slight, always fighting against ignorance in mainstream ideas about ethnicity and culture. I'm acutely aware that the people coming to our southern border are not one faceless brown mass but singular individuals, with stories and backgrounds and reasons for coming that are unique. I feel this awareness in my spine, in my DNA.

So I hoped to present one of those unique personal stories - a work of fiction - as a way to honor the hundreds of thousands of stories we may never get to hear. And in so doing, I hope to create a pause where the reader may begin to individuate. When we see migrant ~ Jeanine Cummins

A little boy, he can play like he's a fireman or a cop
although fewer and fewer are pretending to be cops, thank God
or a deep-sea diver or a quarterback or a spaceman or a rock 'n roll star or a cowboy, or anything else glamorous and exciting (Author's note: What about a novelist, Jellybean?), and although chances are by the time he's in high school he'll get channeled into safer, duller ambitions, the great truth is, he can be any of those things, realize any of those fantasies, if he has the strength, nerve and sincere desire ... But little girls? Podner, you know that story as well as me. Give 'em doll babies, tea sets and toy stoves. And if they show a hankering for more bodacious playthings, call 'em tomboy, humor 'em for a few years and then slip 'em the bad news ... And the reality is, we got about as much chance of growing up to be cowgirls as Eskimos have got being vegetarians. ~ Tom Robbins

Whenever I've had to tamper with history for plot purposes, I make sure to mention that in my author's note, and I try to keep such tampering to a bare minimum. I also attempt to keep my characters true to their historical counterparts. This is not always possible, of course. ~ Sharon Kay Penman

How I Threw Big Party for Jane Austen

It was at a petting party in the White House that I first met Jane Austen. The beautiful little Englishwoman had come to our shores in response to an attractive offer from the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer people, one of whose officers had spelled out her novel 'Pride and Prejudice' and considered it good material for a seven reel comedy. Syd Chaplin was at that time with this firm and was slated for the title role.

Miss Austen had a few weeks' time to spare before she was due in Hollywood and it fell to my lot to entertain her. I postponed my engagement with President Pierce, whom I intended to interview in regard to my pension as general in the Spanish war, and placed myself entirely at the disposal of the little authoress. She expressed a desire to see the night life of New York and I organized a party to visit Texas Guinan's. In the party, besides myself and Miss Austen, or Janey as we called her, were Brinck Thorne, then captain of the Yale football nine, and Harry Wills.*

*Editor's note: The author evidently means 'eleven,' not 'nine.'

*Author's note: Other teams would not play against Mr. Thorne unless he limited himself to eight helpers instead of the regulation ten.

After two or three rounds of drinks we decided we had had enough and a water brought us a check for $22.75. The other two men seemed to have paralysis of the arms and as I found on $1.50 in my pocket, I asked Miss Guinan if ~ Ring Lardner Jr.

Author's note: At a certain point in the first 150 pages of this book there will be an emergency drill. Please follow all instructions and behave exactly as you would in a real emergency. Thank you. ~ Pseudonymous Bosch

It may upset my secret sisters that I say this, but between you and me, if you're so fortunate as to have captured the perfect male, peeling off that chain-mail bikini and becoming a part-time Amazon is not so bad after all.
-Author's Note, Anne Fortier ~ Anne Fortier

Nothing detains the reader's attention more powerfully than deep involutions of distress, or sudden vicissitudes of fortune; and these might be abundantly afforded by memoirs of the sons of literature. They are entangled by contracts which they know not how to fulfill, and obliged to write on subjects which they do not understand. Every publication is a new period of time, from which some increase or declension of fame is to be reckoned. The gradations of a hero's life are from battle to battle, and of an author's from book to book. ~ Samuel Johnson

Me, I'm hanging back, working the camcorder, videoing it all. For some reason, it helps. Maybe I'm like the observer, not the participant?"
"Interesting." Sherman makes a note of this, as if it were useful advice: You could self-treat by carrying a goddamn camcorder around for the rest of your life. ~ Will Boast

So, I'm going to let you in on a secret. I do not control my characters. They control themselves and sometimes, me. I would love to be one of those authors who can plan a book from start to finish with detailed notes on every chapter. I'm just not. Those amazing people are called plotters.

The flip side of this is called being a pantser, meaning you fly by the seat of your pants. I am somewhere in between. I have a few points I want to hit in the story but for the most part I just sit back and let the characters take me where they want to go. ~ Lori Matthews

An eye for an eye my friend. ~ Tsugumi Ohba

I know that many authors say editors don't edit anymore, but that's not been true in my experience. ~ Victor LaValle

If you are an avid reader that loves to discover new books and authors, Kindle Unlimited is going to provide you an amazing deal. ~ Edward Franklin

DO I DETECT A NOTE OF UNSEASONAL GRUMPINESS? said Death. NO SUGAR PIGGYWIGGY FOR YOU, ALBERT. ~ Terry Pratchett

With a perversity of judgement, which must be attributed to his not having by Nature a very strong head, the Graces, the Spirit, the Sagacity, and the Perseverance, of the Villain of the Story outweighed all his absurdities and all his Atrocities with Sir Edward. With him, such Conduct was Genius, Fire and Feeling. It interested and inflamed him; and he was always more anxious for its Success and mourned over its Discomfitures with more Tenderness than could ever have been contemplated by the Authors. ~ Jane Austen

To live in a world that requires you to become someone else, being yourself is your best choice and most valuable accomplishment."

-Steven Cuoco ~ Steven Cuoco

And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

I listen to the sound of India's voices for the last time . Laughter ripples like water . A prayer is a single note held long . There is so much life here . And too much death.I feel a soft brezze caress my face and I look up. An orange ribbon is floating through the air . In India , it's easy to see the wind . ~ Cathy Ostlere

It can happen that a book, unlike its authors, grows younger as the years pass. ~ John Berger

Have you ever seen a chess article without a brilliant example of the author's own play? 'Silly question,' you will say. Quite. ~ Yuri Razuvaev

Every stylistic excess and moral defect which critics conspired to ignore in the author's first books, LANARK and UNLIKELY STORIES, MOSTLY, is to be found here in concentrated form. ~ Alasdair Gray

Fair greetings. I hope this letter finds you well. I have been counting every minute of every day we have been apart. And on every morning when I awake, the first thought I have is of you. In all my life, I never thought that I would find anyone like you. Someone who makes me laugh even when I no longer have strength even to smile. All I have to do is think of you and my heart is instantly gladded. Indeed, I keep every one of your smiles stored especially there in my heart and in my mind. You'll never know how truly sorry I am that fate would not see us united. That things couldn't have been different between you and me. But then there is much in my life that I regret. I hope this note finds you well and that you will smile when you think of me and not be saddened as I am saddened. I would never wish to be the source of your unhappiness. Instead, I hope you have all you desire and that someday, should things be different, you might again welcome me into your arms. Ever yours, Stryder.

-A letter to Rowena ~ Kinley MacGregor

Curriculum companies provide more work than is needed. I never finished the complete curriculum when I taught in a classroom or at home. If your race is with your curriculum, learn to pick and choose what to use, and please do not attempt to cover it all or your race will be ongoing and you will be exhausted. Even races require pit stops to refuel. ~ Tamara L. Chilver

The power of the word, with which the cast away is cast away, pronounces the turning away from all moral uncertainty, from every sympathy with the abyss, the reneging of that phrase of compassion, that "to understand all is to forgive all", and what was beginning here was that "wonder of the reborn impartiality", which was briefly mentioned in one of the author's dialogues with not a little mystery. What strange coherence! ~ Thomas Mann

What I've learned is, what people want is to tell someone, anyone, their problems. ~ Danila Botha

So ardent did he sing, each note might carry a breath of his life. People passing stopped to hear. And seeing them gathered, he stumbled among them with his hat held out. It was easy to credit the truth of his song, that his dim old eyes, they once had shone, that his heart, once cheerful, had been bro-o-ken. Two coins chinkled in his hat. And so it was when nights were still and sleep had yet to bind him, round him shone that other light, fondly to remind him. ~ Jamie O'Neill

After you have done your work - challenging as it may have been to complete - and released it in the marketplace, be not concerned with sales, reviews, critical acclaim, or anything else of the like... After you've written and published a book, you're now an AUTHOR. And that great honor can NEVER be taken away from you, no matter what. ("My Book Place," 2018) ~ Cat Ellington

The reason authors almost always put a dedication on a book is, because their selfishness even horrifies themselves in the end. ~ Stephen King

Keep a note pad and pencil on your bedside table. Million-dollar ideas sometimes strike at 3 A.M. ~ H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

the sapphire depth
of my own love...startles
and warms
and wounds my soul. ~ Sanober Khan

Good action and thoughts produce consequences which tend to neutralize, or put a stop to, the result of evil thoughts and actions. For as we give up the life of self (and note that, like forgiveness, repentance and humility are also special cases of giving), as we abandon what the German mystics called "the I, me, mine," we make ourselves progressively capable of receiving grace. By grace we are enabled to know reality more completely, and this knowledge of reality helps us to give up more of the life of selfhood - and so on, in a mounting spiral of illumination and regeneration. ~ Aldous Huxley

[ ... ]No book can be really complete in this life; it has to end where the author's time and understanding end. There is always something left unsaid. I look forward to the life to come as the unending last chapter of all the good books I have ever read. ~ Kathryn Lindskoog

To change man, the audience by which he judges himself must be changed. A man is defined by his audience: by the people, institutions, authors, magazines, movie heroes, philosophers by whom he pictures himself being cheered and booed. ~ Luke Rhinehart

As for Elizabeth Bennet, our chief reason for accepting her point of view as a reflection of her author's is the impression that she bears of sympathy between them
an impression of which almost every reader would be sensible, even if it had not the explicit confirmation of Jane Austen's letters. Yet, as she is presented to us in Pride and Prejudice, she is but a partial and sometimes perverse observer. ~ Mary Lascelles

Whatever reason, an evening nodding and unconscious in my bedroom at Hobie's had begun to seem like a perfectly reasonable response to the holiday lights, the holiday crowds, the incessant Christmas bells with their morbid funeral note, Kitsey's candy-pink notebook from Kate's Paperie with tabs ~ Donna Tartt

I simply don't understand authors that know everything before they write it; it seems so cold blooded. I think it's lovely when the story takes over and goes somewhere else. ~ Geraldine McCaughrean

In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes,
For they in thee a thousand errors note;
But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise,
Who in despite of view is pleased to dote;
Nor are mine ears with thy tongue's tune delighted,
Nor tender feeling, to base touches prone,
Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited
To any sensual feast* with thee alone*:
But my five wits* nor my five senses can
Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,
Who leaves unsway'd the likeness of a man*,
Thy proud hearts slave and vassal wretch to be:
Only my plague thus far I count my gain,
That she that makes me sin awards me pain. ~ William Shakespeare

The streets are empty. Wind skims the voids keeping neighbors apart, as if grazing the hollow of a cut reed, or say, a plundered mailbox. A familiar note is produced. It's the one Desolation plays to keep its instrument in tune. ~ Andrew Hussie

Have you heard from his lordship lately?" I asked.
"Oh no! About six months ago I had indeed one little note, but I gave it to Macara by mistake, and really I don't know what became of it afterwards."
"Did Macara express hot sentiment of incipient jealousy on thus accidentally learning that you had not entirely dropped all correspondence with the noble Earl?"
"Yes. He said he thought the note was very civilly expressed, and wished me to answer it in terms equally polite."
"Good! And you did so?"
"Of course. I penned an elegant billet on a sheet of rose-tinted note-paper, and sealed it with a pretty green seal bearing the device of twin hearts consumed by the same flame. Some misunderstanding must have occurred, though, for in two or three days afterwards I received it back unopened and carefully enclosed in a cover. The direction was not in his lordship's hand-writing: Macara told me he thought it was the Countess's. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Our first gig was a battle of the bands. We did 45 minutes of comedy and never played a note - and we won! ~ Cheech Marin

Whenever an artist becomes dominated by his own ignorance, his art loses value, for it is only the professional artist that can be humble enough to admit that he is a tool in the hands of creativity. ~ Robin Sacredfire

Authors do not need to offer us the answers to such weighty questions such as how to live and prepare us to accept death. The aim of a writer's is to frame worldly questions that allow all readers too independently and jointly explore life-altering questions in a way that satisfies the fabric of thought corresponding to our respective times. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Any classification according to a singular identity polarizes people in a particular way, but if we take note of the fact that we have many different identities - related not just to religion but also to language, occupation and business, politics, class and poverty, and many others - we can see that the polarization of one can be resisted by a fuller picture. So knowledge and understanding are extremely important to fight against singular polarization. ~ Amartya Sen

Lately, I've been leaning towards kindness.

- Camille Preaker ~ Gillian Flynn

I am part of a light, and it is the music. The Light fills my six senses: I see it, hear, feel, smell, touch and think. Thinking of it means my sixth sense. Particles of Light are written note. O bolt of lightning can be an entire sonata. A thousand balls of lightening is a concert.. For this concert I have created a Ball Lightning, which can be heard on the icy peaks of the Himalayas. ~ Nikola Tesla

Work smartly, diligently and silently; One day your introduction will be "Google Me. ~ Kayambila Mpulamasaka

Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men. ~ Alexander Pope

Paragraphs like this, in their infuriating insignificance, contribute to the unfocused incoherence of the novel: a form in which I revel in the most (if unfocused incoherence might be considered a "form" - I think it can - or an anti-form, if you won't), for it asks nothing from the author except a consistent failure to pull things together in a satisfying manner, and forces the reader to strain hard to comprehend the author's non-existent intentions, and justify their own heroic effort to stagger toward the end of the novel, even if only to write a scathing online review of the novel. I hope that makes no sense. ~ M.J. Nicholls