Favorite Authors Quotes & Sayings

Before I came to England, my favorite authors were P. G. Wodehouse and Agatha Christie. I used to devour both. — Salman Rushdie

Meg Gardiner is one of my favorite authors. She always delivers a terrific read. Phantom Instinct should go to the top of your 'to-be-read' pile. — Karin Slaughter

I read reviews and consider myself pretty 'plugged in' to the literary cosmos, yet one of the things I love best about book-touring is the opportunity to compare notes with favorite booksellers around the country. I always come home with books by authors I'd never heard of - or books I've read about but didn't realize I might love. — Julia Glass

The most satisfying compliment a reader can pay is to tell me that he or she feels personally addressed. Think of your own favorite authors and see if that isn't precisely one of the things that engages you, often at first without your noticing it. A good conversation is the only human equivalent: the realizing that decent points are being made and understood, that irony is in play, and elaboration, and that a dull or obvious remark would be almost physically hurtful. This is how philosophy evolved in the symposium, before philosophy was written down. And poetry began with the voice as its only player and the ear as its only recorder. — Christopher Hitchens

From childhood on, I found many of my angels in favorite authors, writers who created books that enabled me to understand life with greater complexity. These works opened my heart to compassion, forgiveness, and understanding. — Bell Hooks

One of my favorite Christian authors, Sheldon Vanauken, a friend of C. S. Lewis, said years ago that when you get a new car you should also get a hammer. Take that hammer and go out and put the first dent in the brand new car yourself. Then you're not afraid to use it anymore. That way you don't have to park at the end of the parking lot to protect from door dings, because you've already put the first dent in it yourself. Vanauken's point was this: things are not to be loved, they're to be used. The corollary to that is this: people are not to be used, they're to be loved. — Randy Harris

I had some very, very fond memories of the people I worked with and the authors I worked with - and I won't mention any names - but as I have been traveling through rural Maine over the past few weeks, one of my favorite things to do is to go into bookstores on the side of rural routes and paw through the old copies of Tom Clancy and Trevanian books they have in there for weird old 1970s thrillers that I haven't read yet. — John Hodgman

Big Ma didn't need to say any more and she didn't. T.J. was far from her favorite person and it was quite obvious that Stacey and I owed our good fortune entirely to T.J.'s obnoxious personality. — Mildred D. Taylor

I've always been a huge fan of apologetics. C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite authors. — Shane Harper

I really began to love to read while in high school, and my favorite authors were my heroes: J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut. — Louis Sachar

I have favorite authors from a lifetime of reading, so there are some I'll automatically read every time they have a new novel. Included in them: Robert Goddard, Jeffery Deaver, Sophie Kinsella, Katherine Neville, Greg Isle, Laurie King, Lee Child, Lisa Tucker, Susan Howatch, Paul Auster. Barry Eisler, David Hewson, Tracy Chevalier. — M.J. Rose

I used to read a lot. But my focus has gotten worse. My favorites are Russian authors and dark stories where there's no hope. — Robert Pattinson

There are authors I truly enjoy to read, like John Irving and Don Delillo and Vollman and Hubert Selby Jr. and Hunter S. Thompson. And then there are writers that, while I enjoy their work, I read as a challenge to myself, to sharpen my knives, like Goethe or Genet or Faulkner or Joyce or Salinger. And I have a terrible weakness for music biographies. They are the best books to take on the road. I don't even have to like the band to enjoy the book. Want a wonderful literary anecdote? And watch your toes, because I'm dropping names like bricks. My favorite book of all time is Among The Dead by Michael Tolkin. Wonderful, dark, funny book. — Sammy Winston

One of my favorite authors is Robert Cormier. He was a devout Catholic and a very nice man, which might not be the impression you get from reading his books. — Sara Zarr

We've inherited many ideas about writing that emerged in the eighteenth century, especially an interest in literature as both an expression and an exploration of the self. This development - part of what distinguishes the "modern" from the "early modern" - has shaped the work of many of our most celebrated authors, whose personal experiences indelibly and visibly mark their writing. It's fair to say that the fiction and poetry of many of the finest writers of the past century or so - and I'm thinking here of Conrad, Proust, Lawrence, Joyce, Woolf, Kafka, Plath, Ellison, Lowell, Sexton, Roth, and Coetzee, to name but a few - have been deeply autobiographical. The link between the life and the work is one of the things we're curious about and look for when we pick up the latest book by a favorite author. — James Shapiro

I would say that most of my books are contemporary realistic fiction ... a couple, maybe three, fall into the 'historic fiction' category. Science fiction is not a favorite genre of mine, though I have greatly enjoyed some of the work of Ursula LeGuin. I haven't read much science fiction so I don't know other sci-fi authors. — Lois Lowry

One of my favorite modern American authors is Denis Johnson. I'm deeply inspired by all of his work - I rip him off constantly. — Conor Oberst

I don't think that children, if left to themselves, feel that there is an author behind a book, a somebody who wrote it. Grown-ups have fostered this quotient of identity, particularly teachers. Write a letter to your favorite author and so forth. When I was a child I never realized that there were authors behind books. Books were there as living things, with identities of their own. — P.L. Travers

Writing is an art, and true art comes from inspiration, which makes me wonder what kind of fucked-up lives some of my favorite authors have led. Surely — Stevie J. Cole

Tony Abbott's books are so amazing! — Tony Abbott

All my life, the library has always been one of my favorite places to go. (Larry Brown: A Writer's Life by Jean W. Cash) — Larry Brown

I have my favorite authors, but in reality, my mother did. Though she's never written a book, she paved the way for me to. — Franny Armstrong

DRAMA: Be careful about being baited into the personal battles and confusion of others. If you want to help someone out emotionally, be certain he or she has made a commitment to the sacrifice before you intervene for his or her success. If you don't, you're likely to be drained of all your healthy energy with his or her selfish petty, pitiful pretending and negotiating. Be encouraged but more importantly if you can't make it better, whatever you do don't make it worse, for them and especially yourself — Kerry E. Wagner

Where do you get your ideas?' people are always asking authors they admire, which I've always thought was another way of asking, 'How did you get my ideas, which I didn't know I had until you put words to them?' We are known, appreciated, even cherished by our favorite writers; every word of our favorite books seems to have been written for us. Within their sentences and paragraphs, those writers are forever available, forever patient, including us in their compassionate recognition of the impossible, exhausting complexity of being human (those "many thousand" selves), never ignoring us or abandoning us or finding us dull. It's you, they whisper, as we turn their pages, you are the one I've been waiting to tell everything to. — Suzanne Berne

Hemingway's minimalism is based on the psychological mechanics of repression. An echo of his approach can be detected in a favorite trope of 1980s minimalists: a pattern of reference to dire secrets and hidden wounds these authors didn't realize they were supposed to have imagined. — Madison Smartt Bell

One of my favorite authors, Garbrielle Zevin, she did a book called 'Elsewhere,' that is one of my favorites, and I think they're making that into a movie too. I really want to be in that one just because the story is so beautiful. — Isabelle Fuhrman

The National Book Festival is a great way for families and friends to share the creative works of some of America's most-loved authors, .. Readers of all ages can listen to favorite writers speaking about their books, have books autographed, meet many storybook characters and enjoy a day on the National Mall. — Laura Bush

The kids who leave their favorite authors behind do not in fact leave us utterly abandoned, but in due time drive children of their own to the bookstore and the post office. — Jerry Spinelli

As a writer, you must truly possess a love for words."
"Yes, that's right," I agreed.
"I've noticed that some authors favor particular words, making frequent use of them. Do you have a favorite?"
I nodded assuredly and shared my answer. "BECAUSE."
My interviewer looked surprised, as though he'd expected an impressive adjective or some rare verb. "That's your favorite word? Why?"
I tried not to smirk. "Because. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Reviews on Goodreads and Amazon are like crack for authors. Feed your favorite writer's habit today! — Sabine Priestley

I have so many favorite authors; I can't name just one. — Gena Showalter

In fiction, I searched for my favorite authors, women I have trusted to reassure me than not all teenage guys are total ditwads, that the archetype of the noble cute hero who devotes himself to the girl he loves has not gone the way of the rotary phone. That all I had to do was be myself (smart, hardworking, funny) and be patient and kind and he and I would find each other.
As Bea would say, this why they call it fiction. — Sarah Strohmeyer

I love so many books and authors that it's hard to name just a few, but I'm always particularly excited when new books by Alice Hoffman, John Crowley, Joanne Harris, Elizabeth Knox, and Patricia McKillip come out. (And, of course, books by Ellen [Kushner], and Holly [Black], and the rest of the Bordertown crew!) I'm impatiently looking forward to Susanna Clarke's next book too.
Aside from writing and reading, my favorite things to do are paint, walk in the countryside with my dog, and listen to music
especially when it's live and it's played by friends. Fortunately there's a lot of live music where I live. — Terri Windling

I have no illusions concerning the precarious status of my tales and do not expect to become a serious competitor of my favorite weird authors. — H.P. Lovecraft

Along with death trek and survival stories, yarns about tough cops who had embarked on county cleanups were surefire; also guaranteed to please were pieces that had anything to do with islands - storming them, hiding out on them, buying them at bargain rates, becoming GI king of them. (My favorite, written by the great Walter Kaylin, had to do with a seaman who took charge of one and went about ruling it while sitting on the shoulders of a weird little chum with whom he had washed ashore.) — Bruce Jay Friedman

How do you get the happy ending? John Irving ought to know. One of my favorite authors, Irving writes these multigenerational epics of fiction that somehow work out in the end. How does he do it? He says, 'I always begin with the last sentence ; then I work my way backwards, through the plot, to where the story should begin.' Thst sounds like a lot of work, especially compared to the fantasy that great writers sit down and just go where the story takes them. Irving lets us know that good stories and happy endings are more intentional than that.
Most 20 something's can't write the last sentence of their lives. But when pressed, they usually can identify things they want in their 30s or 40s or 60s -or things they don't want- and work backward from there. This is how you have your own multigenerational epic with a happy ending. This is how you live your life in real time. — Meg Jay

We decided we wanted the site to provide readers with fresh new stories to enjoy between major book releases by their favorite authors while allowing those same authors to flex their creative muscles. — Teresa Medeiros

I tell myself it does not matter what one reads
favorite authors, particular themes
as long as we read something. It is not even important to own the books. — Helen Simonson

Most teachers of the humanities lived itinerant lives, traveling from city to city, giving lectures on a few favorite authors, and then restlessly moving on, in the hope of finding new patrons. — Stephen Greenblatt