Un auteur ga"  te tout quand il veut trop bien faire. An author spoils everything when he wants too much to do good.

-La Fontaine,Jean de
  Fables, pt.5, no.1,'Le bu"   cheron et Mercure'.

Wanting to knowanauthor because you like his books is like wanting to know a goose because you like pa"  te¤  .

-Linklater, Eric Robert
Quoted by Kenneth Murphy in the Washington Post, 27 Nov1994.

Every author's fairy godmother should provide him not only with a pen but also with a blue pencil.

-Lucas, F(rank) L(awrence)
  Style, introduction.

If the poem can be improved by its author's explanations, it should never have been published.

-MacLeish, Archibald
   Author's note in Poems.

I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.

-Nabokov,Vladimir
  Strong Opinions, foreword.

Allm a« hlich hat sich mir herausgestellt, was jede groÞe Philosophie bisher war: n a« mlich das Selbstbekenntnis ihres Urhebers und eineArt ungewollter und unvermerkter me¤  moires. It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy has hitherto been: a confession on the part of its author and a kind of involuntaryand unconscious memoir.

-Nietzsche, FriedrichWilhelm
  Jenseits von Gut und Bo«  se (Beyond Good and Evil), section 6 (translated by R  J Hollingdale).

Quand on voit le style naturel, on est tout e¤  tonne¤   et ravi, car on s'attendait de voir un auteur, et on trouve un homme. When we see a natural style we are quite amazed and delighted, because we expected to see an author and find a man.

-Pascal, Blaise
c.1654^1662  Pense¤  es, no.29 (translated byA Krailsheimer).

Six Characters in Search of an Author.

-Pirandello, Luigi
  Title of play (translated1922).

O! would the Sons of Men once think their Eyes And Reason giv'n them but to study Flies? See Nature in some partial narrow shape, And let the Author of the Whole escape.

-Pope, Alexander
  The Dunciad, bk.4, l.453^6.

Literature is not an abstract science, to which exact definitions can be applied.It is an Art rather, the success of which depends on personal persuasiveness, on the author's skill to give as on ours to receive.

-Quiller-Couch, SirArthurThomas known as  'Q'
  Inaugural lecture as Professor of English at Cambridge University.

Car loin de le [le lecteur] ne¤  gliger, l'auteur aujourd'hui proclame l'absolu besoin qu'il a de son concours actif, conscient, cre¤  ateur. Ce qu'il lui demande, ce n'est plus de recevoir tout fait un monde acheve¤  , plein, clos sur lui- me"  me, c'est au contraire de participer a'   une cre¤  ation, d'inventer a'   son tour l'½uvreöet le mondeöet d'apprendre ainsi a'   inventer sa propre vie. Far from neglecting him [the reader], the author today proclaims the absolute necessity of the reader's active, conscious and creative assistance.What he demands of the reader is no longer to receive a ready-made world, complete, full, closed in upon itself.On the contrary, the reader isasked toparticipateinthe creation, toinvent for himself aworköand the worldöand tounderstand thus how to invent his own life.

-Robbe-Grillet, Alain
  Pour un nouveau roman.

Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.

-Ruskin,John
  Sesame and Lilies,'Of Kings' Treasures'.

What really knocksme out isa book that, whenyou'reall done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.

-Salinger,J(erome) D(avid)
The Catcher in the Rye, ch.3.

Le mot 'psychologie'est un de ceux qu'aucun auteur d'aujourd'hui ne peut entendre prononcer a'   son sujet sans baisser les yeux et rougir. The word 'psychology' is one that no author today can hear said about her work without lowering her eyes and blushing.

-Sarraute, Nathalie
' 1956  L'Ere du soup c° on.

Hunting the author, painter and musician is a traditional and popular sport. In this country poet-baiting at an early stage assumed the place of bull-baiting.

-Sitwell, Sir (Francis) Osbert
  'What It Feels Like to be an Author'.

What I like in a good author isnot what hesays, but what he whispers.

-Smith, Logan Pearsall
  AllTrivia,'Afterthoughts'.

   It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writeswith a misty profundity, heis talking nonsense.

-Whitehead, Alfred North
Introduction to Mathematics.

Books of poetry by young writersareusually promissory notes that are never met. Now and then, however, one comes across a volume that is so far above the average that one can hardly resist the fascinating temptation of recklessly prophesying a fine future for its author. Such a book Mr Yeats's Wanderings of Oisin certainly is. Here we find nobility of treatment and nobility of subject- matter, delicacy of poetic instinct and richness of imaginative resource.

-Wilde, Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills
  In the Pall Mall Gazette,12 Jul.