A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one, it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.
Aldous Huxley

A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

A narrative is like a room on whose walls a number of false doors have been painted; while within the narrative, we have many apparent choices of exit, but when the author leads us to one particular door, we know it is the right one because it opens.
John Updike

A publisher should always be on the receiving end. He should take an interest in almost any subject and remain anonymous, letting the author take center stage.
Cass Canfield

A successful tool is one that was used to do something undreamt of by its author.
Stephen C. Johnson

A very wise author once said that a writer writes for himself, and then publishes for money. I write for myself and publish just for the reader.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante

Action is greater than writing. A good man is a nobler object of contemplation than a great author. There are but two things worth living for: to do what is worthy of being written; and to write what is worthy of being read.
Ross Perot

After all, it is style alone by which posterity will judge of a great work, for an author can have nothing truly his own but his style.
Isaac Disraeli

After an author has been dead for some time, it becomes increasingly difficult for his publishers to get a new book out of him each year.
Robert Benchley

All fiction becomes autobiographical when the author has true talent.
Jeanne Moreau

All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That's what makes theatre live. That's why it persists.
Stephen Sondheim

Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being.
A. A. Milne

An author departs, he does not die.
Dinah Maria Mulock

An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.
Charles de Montesquieu

An author knows his landscape best; he can stand around, smell the wind, get a feel for his place.
Tony Hillerman

An author must be nothing if he do not love truth; a barrister must be nothing if he do.
Anthony Trollope

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.
F. Scott Fitzgerald

An author who sets about to depict events of the past that have run their course is suspected of wishing to avoid the problems of the present day, of being, in other words, a reactionary.
Lion Feuchtwanger

An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.
Benjamin Disraeli