Massachusetts Author Quotes

Sometimes a soldier returns home and all he can do is share his story in the hopes that somehow, in some way, it helps another soldier make sense of things. And although the stories may not be perfect, sometimes just sharing is enough to make a difference. ~ Michael Anthony

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. . . . The Scotch catechism says that man's chief end is 'to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.' But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him. ~ C.S. Lewis

The science fiction author, H.G. Wells was an avid supporter of eugenics and a believer in a hierarchy of the races. ~ A.E. Samaan

The history of books shows the humblest origin of some of the most valued, wrought as these were out of obscure materials by persons whose names thereafter became illustrious. The thumbed volumes, now so precious to thousands, were compiled from personal experiences and owe their interest to touches of inspiration of which the writer was less author than amanuensis, himself the voiced word of life for all times. ~ Amos Bronson Alcott

I would make a HORRIBLE outlaw. I can plan the crime perfectly, but I'd also need to plan the outcomes to make it work. ~ Michelle M. Pillow

Your word is your brand and if your word contradicts the quality of what you grow and sell, you will have difficulty in your community in the future. ~ Cindy Ann Peterson

... P doth protest to much. It would be one thing if P were merely silent about Midian. But P is hostile to Midian. Its author tells a story of a complete massacre of the Midianites. He wants no Midianites around. And he especially wants no Midianite women around. This author buried the Moses-Midian connection. We can know why he did this. Practically all critical scholars ascribe this Priestly work to the established priesthood at Jerusalem. For most of the biblical period, that priesthood traced its ancestry to Aaron, the first high priest. It was a priesthood of Levites, but not the same Levites who gave us the E text. Some, including me, ascribe the E text to Levites who traced their ancestry to Moses. These two Levite priestly houses, the Aaronids and the Mushites, were engaged in struggles for leadership and in polemic against each other. The E (Mushite) source took pains, as we have seen to connect Moses' Midianite family back to Abraham. That is understandable. E was justifying the Mushite Levites' line in Israel's history. And it is equally understandable why their opponents, the Aaronids, cast aspersions on any Midianite background. That put a cloud over any Levites, or any text, that claimed a Midianite genealogy. We all could easily think of parallel examples in politics and religion in history and today. ~ Richard Elliott Friedman

Most papers in computer science describe how their author learned what someone else already knew. ~ Peter Landin

The life you live in as an author is nothing but lies. The men you create, the men you read, it's all bullshit. I never understood your need for it when you have me. ~ E.K. Blair

Too old for dolls. Too ill for tablets. ~ Carla H. Krueger

At the Theatre: To the Lady Behind Me

Dear Madam, you have seen this play;
I never saw it till today.
You know the details of the plot,
But, let me tell you, I do not.
The author seeks to keep from me
The murderer's identity,
And you are not a friend of his
If you keep shouting who it is.
The actors in their funny way
Have several funny things to say,
But they do not amuse me more
If you have said them just before;
The merit of the drama lies,
I understand, in some surprise;
But the surprise must now be small
Since you have just foretold it all.
The lady you have brought with you
Is, I infer, a half-wit too,
But I can understand the piece
Without assistance from your niece.
In short, foul woman, it would suit
Me just as well if you were mute;
In fact, to make my meaning plain,
I trust you will not speak again.
And - may I add one human touch? -
Don't breathe upon my neck so much. ~ A.P. Herbert

I base a deuteragonist on the best friend I never had. A lot of good ideas come from what I never had and cause my imagination to light up. ~ B.A. Gabrielle

The ability to make somebody feel something: that's art. However you look at it, whether you're an author, a painter, a singer, a rapper, a spoken-word artist - art. ~ Wale

... schools in many industrialized nations were not, for the most part, designed to produce innovative thinkers or questioners -- their primary purpose was to produce workers. The author Seth Godin writes, "Our grandfathers and great grandfathers built schools to train people to have a lifetime of productive labor as part of the industrialized economy. And it worked."
To create good workers, educations systems put a premium on compliancy and rote memorization of basic knowledge -- excellent qualities in an industrial worker. (Or, as the cartoonist and Simpsons creator Matt Groening puts it, "it seems the main rule that traditional schools teach is how to sit in rows quietly, which is perfect training for grown-up work in a dull office or factory, but not so good for education.")
And not so good for questioning: To the extent a school is like a factory, students who inquire about "the way things are" could be seen as insubordinate. It raises, at least in my mind, a question that may seem extreme: If schools were build on a factory model, were they actually designed to squelch questions? ~ Warren Berger

I don't think I can pick apart how I was influenced by which author. But these were the authors whose books I went back to again and again when I was in high school and college, when I first started trying to write stories. ~ Martha Wells

The liberty, prosperity, and the happiness of our country will always be the object of my most fervent prayers to the Supreme Author of All Good. ~ James Monroe

Mychael Eiliesor. Guardian paladin, sacred protector, master spellsinger, fashion consultant. ~ Lisa Shearin

My view, as one who taught it, is that the whole purpose of a literary education should be to tell people that these things exist. I don't think any teacher should try to 'teach an author,' but rather simply describe what the author has written. And this is what I tried to do. ~ Guy Davenport

You Can't Change Your Life... Until You Change Your Heart, and You Can't Change Your Heart... Until You Change Your Mind! ~ Latif Mercado

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

I don't know'," he said. "Those three words from a willing soul are the start of a grand and magnificent voyage." And with that he began a discourse that lasted for several weeks, covering scene-setting, establishing conflict, plot twists, and first- and third-person narration. [ I learned in these rapid-fire mini-dissertations that like most literature lovers I would come to know, Henry was a book snob. He assumed that if a current author was popular and widely enjoyed, then he or she had no merit. He made a few exceptions, such as Kurt Vonnegut, although that was mostly because Vonnegut lived on Cape Cod and so he probably had some merits as a human being, if not as a writer.
I think that the way Henry saw it was that he was not being a snob. In fact I would venture that in his view of things, snobbery had nothing to do with it. Rather, it was a matter of standards. It was bout quality in the author's craftsmanship. ~ John William Tuohy

Your life is like a book.
You are the hero, death is the villain, and God is the divine author. Like any good story there are conflicts, climaxes, plot twists, and even a few cliffhangers, but He isn't done yet! A hero always has a period of doubt and defeat, a hard time where they almost give in to the evil. But in the end, the hero always makes a comeback and defeats the villain. This is God's awesome plan for your story and he has already finished the ending! Anyone who believes in him will overcome death! Yeah, you've had your share of ups and downs, but He has great things in store for you. Right now, you might only see the chapter you are on and is might not be very pretty, but don't worry! God can see the big picture and what an amazing masterpiece you will become. Don't take matters into your own hands, let God handle it. Trust me, whatever He's got planned is far better than anything you can imagine! ~ Fennec Fox

Neither in the deepest ocean
Nor in the perpetual snow
Heaven was on earth that day
For some reason we are yet to know ~ Sameer Kumar

I was definitely meant to be a young adult author, and I love it - I'm here to stay! ~ Simone Elkeles

You know... It's been a long time since I've been that nervous."
"You were nervous?" I ask. "Why?"
"I'm making love to a romance author," he explains with a grin. "Your standards are high."
"My standards are fictional. ~ Jacqueline E. Smith

The world is forever babbling of originality; but there never yet was an original man, in the sense intended by the world; the first man himself
who according to the Rabbins was also the first author
not being an original; the only original author being God. ~ Herman Melville

Just a minute, Cosmic Ordering can give you a whole lot more ... a whole lifetime of more. ~ Stephen Richards

There is a difference between an author and a writer. The author never gives up when things go wrong, but the writer does. ~ Millicent Ashby

So he held her and he prayed. Shafts of moonlight on his face. But the baby in her womb, He was the maker of the moon. He was the author of the fate that could make the mountains move. ~ Andrew Peterson

It's very hard to get one publisher to accept an author going over to the other author's company to collaborate. ~ Marcia Muller

Some books make us dream, others bring us face to face with reality, but what matters most to the author is the honesty with which a book is written. ~ Paulo Coelho

Lignin, the stuff that prevents all trees from adopting the weeping habit, is a polymer made up of units that are closely related to vanillin. When made into paper and stored for years, it breaks down and smells good. Which is how divine providence has arranged for secondhand bookstores to smell like good quality vanilla absolute, subliminally stoking a hunger for knowledge in all of us. ~ Luca Turin (Author) Tania Sanchez (Author)

the man who has a favorite restaurant but not a favorite author. He's picked out a favorite place to feed his body, but he doesn't have a favorite place to feed his mind! One ~ Jim Rohn

How wonderful it is that no one has to wait, but can start right now to change the world! How wonderful it is that everyone, great and small, can immediately help bring about justice by giving of themselves! ~ Anne Frank

There are winter evenings in Massachusetts when there is no wind and the crust on the snow seems to hold in the cold. And if the moon is three-quarters full, its light adds a kind of warmth to the surrounding earth. ~ Kathleen Kent

The author found participants in a study able to come up with more reasons to support their position but not anymore likely to change their minds based on contradictory evidence. In effect, they enlist their IQ on behalf of their instincts. ~ Jonathan Haidt

The writer's job, after all, is not to dictate meaning, but to give the reader enough pieces to create his or her own satisfying meaning. The story is truly finished - and meaning is made - not when the author adds the last period, but when the reader enters the story and fills that little ambiguous space, completing the circuit, letting the power flow through. ~ Celeste Ng

I read to escape...I write to help others escape...
--Howard Hopkins, Author of The Chloe Files ~ Howard Hopkins

The pain
breached through the indolence of mind. But the dizziness
made reactions very slow and stretched, like a novice stage
actor stretching his death scene for missing queue of actors,
leaving audience in splits. ~ Abhish

Anthony Ryan is a new fantasy author destined to make his mark on the genre. His debut novel, Blood Song, certainly has it all: great coming of age tale, compelling character, and a fast-paced plot. If his first book is any indication of things to come, then all fantasy readers should rejoice as a new master storyteller has hit the scene. ~ Michael J. Sullivan

The basis of almost every argument or conclusion I can make is the axiom that the short story can be anything the author decides it shall be; ... In that infinite flexibility, indeed lies the reason why the short story has never been adequately defined. ~ H.E. Bates

KA: What is your basic process working with a writer?

LB: I read a manuscript very quickly first, then I sit down the second time and start reading very carefully and do the detail work, the minute hammering on every page. At this point, I know where the story goes so I'm looking for holes. I'm looking for anything that doesn't add up. The best way to edit is to live entirely in the world as much as you can. Before I had a child I would edit ten hours on Friday ten hours on Saturday and ten hours on Sunday (obviously I had no hobbies or any nee to go outdoors). You knew everything about the book. You were in tune with every character. You have the voice in your head. Then the author gets a hugely marked up manuscript with all these little scribbles. I'm asking them every question that occurs to me. I give them as much time as they want to sit and digest it. Again, this is one of the reasons I like working far in advance. I have time with the manuscript and they have time with the manuscript. I'm happy to let them work in peace and quiet.

Then we go back and forth as long as is helpful to them. They do the revision and it lands on my desk again. I read it again beginning to end. I assume it doesn't need a line edit at that point, although I tend to read with a pencil in my hand. There could be one big thing still sticking in your craw that didn't get fixed, so you just roll up your sleeves… ~ Lee Boudreaux

Fresh from the rarefied environments of Harvard, the author says he purposefully took journalism jobs in small southern towns so that he could learn the art of conversation with ordinary people. Is this gift for listening and for conversation, it seems, that allowed him to produce textured historical narratives of grand impact. ~ David Halberstam

Think about yourself.
You are here because...
Your dad met your mom.
Then your dad and mom conceived you.
So a particular egg in your mom
Joined a particular sperm from your dad
Which could only happen because not one of your direct ancestors, going all the way back to the beginning of life itself, died before passing on his or her genes...
So what are the chances of you happening?
Of you being here?

Author and blogger Dr. Ali Binazir did the calculations last spring and decided that the chances of anyone existing are one in 102,685,000. In other words, as this infographic figures it, you are totally improbable. ~ Robert Krulwich

So much for land ownership, Henry thinks; it's a modern myth. You can buy and sell rights to use the land; you can't actually own it. He tries to remember who said, the land doesn't belong to you, you belong to the land; the author was certainly Native American, but he can't pin down the source. ~ J.J. Brown

The best thing about being a writer is that 'work' is always something you love, plus usually accompanied by tea, coffee and cakes of some sort. ~ Jamie L. Harding

We have to bring our imaginations to bear on a story if we are to see all it's possibilitiess; otherwise it's just about somebody who did something. Whatever we take away from stories in the way of significance, symbolism, theme, meaning, pretty much anything except character and plot, we discover because our imagination engages with that of the author. Pretty amazing when you consider that the author may have been dead for thousands of years, yet we can still have this exchange, this dialogue, with her. ~ Thomas C. Foster

Readers will stay with an author, no matter what the variations in style and genre, as long as they get that sense of story, of character, of empathetic involvement. ~ Dean Koontz

When I write, regardless of what I'm writing, or how I approach the writing task, I've got this image or shape or feeling inside me somewhere, a sort of embroidery pattern, a sort of magic-pencil outline, a sort of distant melody." - Pamela Mordecai ~ Pamela Mordecai