Dianetics Author Quotes

Words--Midnight coined and daily spent. . .writer of the dream.
--Jim Ross Author, Rays: Wherever They Touch ~ Jim Ross

Writing is not about how well you can write the next "Great American Novel," using flawless grammar and snooty punctuation; sometimes, it's only about making someone smile, or laugh out loud. Sometimes, its sharing a fun thought, or putting a vivid life experience on paper so others' can share a great moment that had an impact on you, the author. ~ T. Hammond

An author arrives at a good style when his language performs what is required of it without shyness. ~ Cyril Connolly

You can achieve anything in life if you focus on one task at a time. ~ Jay Author

I want to... have fun with writing again. Enjoy my work, enjoy playing with the language and characters like a sculptor plays with clay. But there's this manic focus on numbers--how many books have you written and how many have you sold and it's all push, push, push, and no time for reflection--but at heart, books are about dreaming... which is just the opposite. So I don't know...
M.M. Bennetts comment to Nancy Bilyeau as related in Nancy's tribute "M.M. Bennetts: The Closest Friend I Never Met ~ M.M. Bennetts

The prosecutor, who is supposed to carry the burden of proof, really is an author. ~ Scott Turow

Upon their meeting in New York in 1958: "We didn't want to live together. We didn't have any examples of what a good love relationship between two men could be. And there was always the problem of hiding so no one would know we were gay. There was no question that if I were known to be gay, living with another man, it would make it more difficult for me to get work as an actor." - Alan Shayne, co-author, Double Life ~ Alan Shayne

Many a reader who wanted to read a tale through was not able to do it because of delays on account of the weather. Nothing breaks up an author's progress like having to stop every few pages to fuss-up the weather. Thus it is plain that persistent intrusions of weather are bad for both reader and author. ~ Mark Twain

Every author should have fallen in love at least once...and I am not talking about arranged marriage love :) ~ Shikha Kaul

A great work must be novel without being far-fetched, frequently sublime, but always natural. The author must know the human heart, and how to make it speak; he must be a poet, without letting any of his characters speak like poets; and he must be a master of his language, using it purely and harmoniously and not letting the rhyme interfere with the sense. ~ Voltaire

Chronicling the mid-1970s up session with Gerald Ford's clumsiness, the author quotes a medieval maxim that the king has two bodies. The head of state has a physical body like everyone else, but he also represents the body politic, either reflecting its majesty or its weakness. ~ Rick Perlstein

If you can make it down to the pub, the pub will make it up to you. ~ Benny Bellamacina

Meeting writers is always so disappointing. I got over wanting to meet live writers quite a long time ago. There is this terrific book that has changed your life, and then you meet the author, and he has shifty eyes and funny shoes and he won't talk about anything except the injustice of the United States income tax structure toward people with fluctuating income, or how to breed Black Angus cows, or something. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

First, it is largely unknown just how the Holy Spirit interacted with the author of an original Biblical manuscript- 'passive' vs. 'active' (I contend that it was both/and). Secondly, it is also widely unknown just what the 'process' involved in 'canonization' was. Additionally, I see little evidence of the injection of personal bias if any by the Biblical authors. ~ R. Alan Woods

Humility and repentance are necessary to restore your relationship with God. ~ Jim George

As an author, one of the most important things I think you can do once you've written a novel is step back. When the book is out, it belongs to the readers and you can't stand there breathing over their shoulders. ~ Madeline Miller

[ ... ] students should be told that an effort is always required, when you start to read a serious author, to overcome mental laziness and reluctance, because you are about to enter the mind of someone who thinks differently from yourself. And that is the whole point and the only point: the literary treasure-house has many mansions. ~ Doris Lessing

But authorship is not to be denied. Not even if you are Thomas Pynchon and stonewall all attempts to establish your actual existence. My own feeling is that Pynchon does not exist, and neither do the last five hundred pages of Gravity's Rainbow, but there is no question whatsoever that Thomas Pynchon is an author. ~ Roy Blount, Jr.

My parents were horrified when I told them I wanted to be an author. ~ Lloyd Alexander

Both Tom and I adore detective stories. Isn't that so, Tom?" [Lady Brace]
"Right!" agreed her husband ... "But they've got to be proper detective stories. They've got to present a tricky, highly sophisticated problem, which you're given fair opportunity to solve."
"And," amplified Virginia, "no saying they're psychological studies when the author can't write for beans."
"Correct!" her husband agreed again. "Couldn't care less when you're supposed to get all excited as to whether the innocent man will be hanged or the innocent heroine will be seduced. Heroine ought to be seduced; what's she there for? The thing is the mystery. It's not worth reading if the mystery is simple or easy or no mystery at all. ~ Carter Dickson

The author of this book ciritcizes "the youth of today" from top to toe, without, however, condemning the whole of the young brigade as "incapable of anything good. ~ Anne Frank

Adrienne Mayor's inquiry into the myth
and surprising reality
of Amazon women begins with the fierce Greek huntress Atalanta, but takes us deep into the past and as far afield as the Great Wall of China. With the restless curiosity and meticulous scholarship that have become her hallmark, the author once again has found a gap in my bookshelf and filled it, admirably. ~ Steven Saylor

The great thing about writing fiction is that you can do whatever the fuck you want, go as far as you are willing to go, and laugh at the people who take it seriously. ~ Richard P. Denney

Reality for me is what I create! ~ Manjiri Prabhu

The world an author creates and the characters that inhabit it may come from her imagination alone, but few authors can wrestle the story that emerges into shape without help. ~ Tammara Webber

To write history one must be more than a man, since the author who holds the pen of this great justiciary must be free from all preoccupation of interest or vanity. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

I think this man might actually possess supernatural powers. He makes people lose their minds and I'm sure some of them do lose bladder control as well."
"I see. And who is this author"
"Neil Fucking Gaiman."
"His second name is Fucking?"
"No Leif that's the honorary second name all celebrities are given by their fans. It's not an insult it's a huge compliment and he's earned it. ~ Kevin Hearne

So what if you believe it can't be done. Stop trying to prevent those who do believe from reaching for the stars. ~ Teyla Branton

In reading, one should notice and fondle details. There is nothing wrong about the moonshine of generalization when it comes after the sunny trifles of the book have been lovingly collected. If one begins with a readymade generalization, one begins at the wrong end and travels away from the book before one has started to understand it. Nothing is more boring or more unfair to the author than starting to read, say, Madame Bovary, with the preconceived notion that it is a denunciation of the bourgeoisie. We should always remember that the work of art is invariably the creation of a new world, so that the first thing we should do is to study that new world as closely as possible, approaching it as something brand new, having no obvious connection with the worlds we already know. When this new world has been closely studied, then and only then let us examine its links with other worlds, other branches of knowledge. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

The writers she prefers are long dead and are on the wordy side. If the novel on the sofa is 700 pages long, and the author photo is an engraving, it's either hers or Hugh's. ~ David Sedaris

I see the beauty of books and sacred-souls of every author displaced in a bookshop. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Being a best-selling author just means the world for me. Some of my happiest memories, growing up, are being at book stores and reading books I couldn't afford, as a kid, and the midnight parties, waiting for the next Harry Potter book. The fact that I have that straw in my cap means more to me than anything I've ever accomplished before. ~ Chris Colfer

Love comes to those who still hope even though they've been disappointed, to those who still believe even though they've been betrayed, to those who still love even though they've been hurt before ... Anonymous author ~ Shania Twain

LEXICOGRAPHER, n. A pestilent fellow who, under the pretense of recording some particular stage in the development of a language, does what he can to arrest its growth, stiffen its flexibility and mechanize its methods. For your lexicographer, having written his dictionary, comes to be considered "as one having authority," whereas his function is only to make a record, not to give a law. The natural servility of the human understanding having invested him with judicial power, surrenders its right of reason and submits itself to a chronicle as if it were a statue. Let the dictionary (for example) mark a good word as "obsolete" or "obsolescent" and few men thereafter venture to use it, whatever their need of it and however desirable its restoration to favor - whereby the process of improverishment is accelerated and speech decays. On the contrary, recognizing the truth that language must grow by innovation if it grow at all, makes new words and uses the old in an unfamiliar sense, has no following and is tartly reminded that "it isn't in the dictionary" - although down to the time of the first lexicographer (Heaven forgive him!) no author ever had used a word that was in the dictionary. In the golden prime and high noon of English speech; when from the lips of the great Elizabethans fell words that made their own meaning and carried it in their very sound; when a Shakespeare and a Bacon were possible, and the language now rapidly perishing at one end and slowly renewed at t ~ Ambrose Bierce

Give me thirty minutes in a hostel, hotel or hospital and I can walk out with a novel idea. ~ D.W. Plato

I had no more value after I became an author than when I was in my home tending to runny noses, little bumps and bruises ... Our value can't be wrapped inside what others think or we think, because that is too dependent on this ever-shifting world. The value God places on us makes us more than we think we are, even on our hardest days, weeks, or years. ~ Cindy Woodsmall

Writers are like onions, layers upon layers upon layers. ~ Luke Taylor

The central message of the Clare series, I think, is not to underestimate or marginalize those who you deem weaker or different than yourself as you have no idea what they're capable of. You never know – those of whom you relentlessly persecute may just end up killing you. ~ Don Roff

Acute [diseases] meaning those of which God is the author, chronic meaning those that originate in ourselves. ~ Thomas Sydenham

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

For where is any author in the world Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye? ~ William Shakespeare

For the religious, passivism [i.e., objects are obedient to the laws of nature] provides a clear role of God as the author of the laws of nature. If the laws of nature are God's commands for an essentially passive world ... , God also has the power to suspend the laws of nature, and so perform miracles. ~ Brian Ellis