Goodreads Authors Quotes

I don't need my
Other-half,
I'm not a
HALF... ~ Natasha Jain

You sit right next to me.
Still you don't seem close to me. ~ Shillpi S Banerrji

Again, how will we keep them loyal? What measures can ensure our machines stay true to us? Once artificial intelligence matches our own, won't they then design even better ai minds? Then better still, with accelerating pace? At worst, might they decide (as in many cheap dramas), to eliminate their irksome masters? At best, won't we suffer the shame of being nostalgically tolerated? Like senile grandparents or beloved childhood pets? Solutions? Asimov proposed Laws of Robotics embedded at the level of computer DNA, weaving devotion toward humanity into the very stuff all synthetic minds are built from, so deep it can never be pulled out. But what happens to well-meant laws? Don't clever lawyers construe them however they want? Authors like Asimov and Williamson foresaw supersmart mechanicals becoming all-dominant, despite deep programming to "serve man. ~ David Brin

I write because it's the only thing I love that always loves me back. ~ Crystal Woods

Are my characters copies of people in real life? ... Don't ever believe the stories about authors putting people into novels. That idea is a kind of joke on both authors and readers. All the readers believe that authors do it. All the authors know that it can't be done. ~ Ayn Rand

Tides of History provides a splendid prism through which we may view the wider world of Victorian science ... Historians of science will have cause to heap praise on this book, but so too will the non-specialists. The author's splendid writing style, at times appropriately Puckish, makes this work an accessible and enjoyable read. ~ William M. Fowler

My urge at Christmas time or Hanukkah-time or Kwanzaa-time is that people go to bookstores: that they walk around bookstores and look at the shelves. Go to look for authors that they've loved in the past and see what else those authors have written. ~ Michael Dirda

Every lover of books has authors whom he reads over and over again, whom he cares for as persons and not as sources of information, who are more to him, possibly, than any person he sees. He continually returns to the cherished companion and feeds eagerly upon his thought. It is because there is something in the book which he needs, which awakens and directs trains of thought that lead him where he likes to be led. ~ Charles Horton Cooley

Going by Dr. Marriott's description, Zoe imagined it to be small and elegant as she peered into dozens of shelves, rummaging through the contents. There were globes and charts and atlases, pocket watches and hand-painted Indian silk, gold-plated cutlery, litter coffers of spice, inlaid combs, silver fasteners, trinket boxes, blown-glass figurines, turn-of-the-century postcards with foreign stamps, and portraits of Victorian authors in elaborate frames. But nowhere did she discover a stone of any kind, with or without runes. ~ Christine Brodien-Jones

We have to emphasize to the gay community that opposition to same-sex marriages is not about hate, but about debate. Opposition to what some of us see as a devastating move that will further weaken the family and harm children
such opposition is not hateful. Morality is not bigotry.
In their book The Homosexual Agenda, authors Alan Sears and Craig Osten give this illustration, which I've summarized: Imagine that you are standing at the bottom of a cliff and you are watching as someone on the ledge above you is walking backwards, and in a few steps he will surely fall over the precipice. You shout, warning him to stop, and before you know it, a crowd gathers around you, snapping your picture and accusing you of "hate speech." You are being warned to keep your prejudices to yourself. After all, who are you to tell someone where they can and can't walk? Who are you to say that someone can't walk backwards? You are dumbfounded, but there you are, the object of everyone's wrath. ~ Erwin W. Lutzer

What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers. ~ Logan Pearsall Smith

When a group of ultra-opinionated, uber-creative romance authors get together, I'm sure you guys can imagine how fast the ideas start flying! ~ Teresa Medeiros

The novel, arguably the author's best, had a disquieting power, like a sleeping crocodile. ~ Roberto Bolano

I think it's always good to read local authors or relevant books. In Egypt, I studied hieroglyphics and read everything about the mummies. ~ Jane Birkin

Lawyers aren't the most popular people, Miss Allen ... - Murder in Hand ~ Celia Conrad

What is so special about a title? The mode and significance of titles have changed with the change in the lyrical traditions. So these transitions in style and the art of signification are all collective. What has never changed is the author's intentionality in entitling his works. The art of giving a title to a piece of work is entirely conscious. The author chooses, exercises his will in giving a title to his work. ~ Anuradha Bhattacharyya

Banking doesn't involve fraud, banking IS fraud.
(from video by Paul Grignon done for United Financial Consumers (2002) )
(Added to goodreads by Mike Tobin) ~ Tim Madden

You may dream freely when you listen to music as well as when you look at painting. When you read a book you are the slave of the author's mind. ~ Paul Gauguin

The sky had cleared, and now the sun was overhead, already baking the wet ground so that you could see the humidity drifting lazily above the cotton stalks. ~ John Grisham

Watching copulating dung-beetles is exciting if you drink enough Red Bull, Jack. ~ Jonathan Dunne

This is not a romance - I have too often faced the music of life to the tune of hardship to waste time in snivelling and gushing over fancies and dreams [author's introduction] ~ Miles Franklin

I think the judging process is full of integrity, compared to some other prizes around the world. The fact that they change the panel of judges every year keeps it from becoming corrupt. I think it's very difficult if you've got judges for life; obviously relationships are cultivated between judges and authors, and publishing houses. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

I dispute the right of conservatives to be automatically complacent on these points. My own Marxist group took a consistently anti-Moscow line throughout the 'Cold War,' and was firm in its belief that that Soviet Union and its European empire could not last. Very few people believed that this was the case: The best known anti-Communist to advance the proposition was the great Robert Conquest, but he himself insists that part of the credit for such prescience goes to Orwell. More recently, a very exact prefiguration of the collapse of the USSR was offered by two German Marxists, one of them from the West (Hans Magnus Enzensberger) and one from the East (Rudolf Bahro, the accuracy of whose prediction was almost uncanny). I have never met an American conservative who has even heard of, let alone read, either of these authors. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Don't spend more than 10% of your marketing/PR budget on a trailer. Trailers have to be marketed, too. So, far too many authors wind up marketing their trailers instead of their books. ~ M.J. Rose

On Slavery: The saddest slap in the face is we have NO monument, no real statues or memorials, no special day of Atonement or Remembrance (NOT ONE), no thanks for 400+ years of free labor, forced servitude across the Trans-Atlantic, ass beatings, buying ourselves and families out of slavery, rape and plunder ... but everyone else has monuments, special museums, and even movies. This is what America thinks of black people, so-called black president and all, who has been largely silent on this subject ... we'll even celebrate Leprechauns, Easter Bunnies, and Secretary's Day before we acknowledge our history. ~ Brandi L. Bates

Autobiographical writing acts as a timeless testament to each person's epic record of adventure, heartache, road to perdition, and achievement of a spiritual life devoid of the consternation, trepidation, foreboding fear, and inconsolably hankering for what is unattainable for humankind. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Like Sylvia Plath, Natalie Jeanne Champagne invites you so close to the pain and agony of her life of mental illness and addiction, which leaves you gasping from shock and laughing moments later: this is both the beauty and unique nature of her storytelling. With brilliance and courage, the author's brave and candid chronicle travels where no other memoir about mental illness and addiction has gone before. The Third Sunrise is an incredible triumph and Natalie Jeanne Champagne is without a doubt the most important new voice in this genre. ~ Andy Behrman

Where perfumed rivers flow,
Is the home of my beloved.
Where passing breezes halt,
Is the home of my beloved.

Where dawn arrives on bare toes,
Where night paints henna-beams on feet,
Where fragrance bathes in moonlight,
Is the home of my beloved.

Where rays of light roam nakedly,
In green forests of sandalwood.
Where the flame seeks the lamp,
Is the home of my beloved.

Where sunsets sleep on wide waters,
And the deer leap.
Where tears fall for no reason,
Is the home of my beloved.

Where the farmer sleeps hungry,
Even though the wheat is the color of my beloved,
Where the wealthy ones lie in hiding,
Is the home of my beloved.

Where perfumed rivers flow,
Is the home of my beloved.
Where passing breezes halt,
Is the home of my beloved. ~ Shiv Kumar Batalvi

Time will always have the answer in the end, whether you like that answer is immaterial to Time because it tends not to keep friends. ~ Jonathan Dunne

Look every creature from the window of compassion with the eyes of love! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

He had started out the way nearly all writers do, and I'd seen it a hundred times--amateurs transformed into gibbering wrecks by actually being published; what once they'd done for fun ruined forever by the burden of expectation, the hope of sales and good reviews and riches, hobbyists turned authors made bitter by the knowledge that they'd missed their main chance. ~ Colin Bateman

All raw, uncooked, protesting."
(on Aldous Huxley) ~ Virginia Woolf

Inspiration: The process by which God worked through the human authors of the Bible to communicate His revelation. The term derives from the Greek theopneustos, meaning "God-breathed" (2 Tim. 3:16), and refers to God as the ultimate source of the Scriptures. ~ Anonymous

Authors are far closer to the truths enfolded in mystery than ordinary people, because of that very audacity of imagination which irritates their plodding critics. As only those who dare to make mistakes succeed greatly, only those who shake free the wings of their imagination brush, once in a way, the secrets of the great pale world. If such writers go wrong, it is not for the mere brains to tell them so ~ Gertrude Atherton

This world has never failed to disappoint
And it has its way to teach me that the best thing you may do is running back to yourself
Make a therapy out of your favorite things;
Read for your favorite authors,
Listen to music,
Write love notes to yourself,
And enjoy solitude between the walls of your room.
The world is so cold outside, so learn to enjoy the warmth of those details you have always had but never learned to appreciate … ~ Samiha Totanji

Dear Homeschool Mom, You've got this! God called you to it, and He will see you through it. Inhale Grace. Exhale Doubt. ~ Tamara L. Chilver

Said one of the wise: the wrath of you did not do evil in you, "Go for it authors of" you, anger exposes quality of human beings ~ Undefined

God will help you do it if you trust and lean on Him for guidance and strength. ~ Tamara L. Chilver

For the plan grows under the author's hand; new thoughts occur to him in the act of writing; he has not worked out the argument to the end before he begins. ~ Plato

Book writing is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Anyone who decides to write a book must expect to invest a lot of time and effort without any guarantee of success. Books do not write themselves and they do not sell themselves. Authors write and promote their books. ~ Dan Poynter

I have chosen to parody the writing styles of Carlos Castaneda, James Redfield, Richard Bach, Lynn Andrews, and several other best-selling new age authors. ~ Frederick Lenz

There are, however, at least two varieties of imagination in the reader's case. So let us see which one of the two is the right one to use in reading a book. First, there is the comparatively lowly kind which turns for support to the simple emotions and is of a definitely personal nature ... This lowly variety is not the kind of imagination I would like readers to use.
So what is the authentic instrument to be used by the reader? It is impersonal imagination and artistic delight. What should be established, I think, is an artistic harmonious balance between the reader's mind and the author's mind. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

The reciprocal civility of authors is one of the most risible scenes in the farce of life. ~ Samuel Johnson

We ought never to be afraid to repeat an ancient truth, when we feel that we can make it more striking by a neater turn, or bring it alongside of another truth, which may make it clearer, and thereby accumulate evidence. It belongs to the inventive faculty to see clearly the relative state of things, and to be able to place them in connection; but the discoveries of ages gone by belong less to their first authors than to those who make them practically useful to the world. ~ Luc De Clapiers

It was never for you, Annie, or all the other people out there who sign their letters "Your number-one fan." The minute you start to write all those people are at the other end of the galaxy, or something. It was never for my ex-wives, or my mother, or for my father. The reason authors almost always put a dedication on a book, Annie, is because their selfishness even horrifies themselves in the end. But ~ Stephen King

It was considered very bad form to wish authors on their birthdays 'many happy returns. ~ Olivia Goldsmith