Pseudonym Quotes & Sayings

In 1962 I wrote for 'Jazz News,' using the pseudonym Manfred Manne, which I picked because of a jazz drummer with that name. I later dropped the 'e.' — Manfred Mann

Henry Gerber, writing in 1932 under the pseudonym Parisex, responded to an article in The Modern Thinker that condemned homosexuality. "Is not the psychiatrist again putting the cart before the horse in saying that homosexuality is a symptom of the neurotic style of life?" he insisted. "Would it not sound more natural to say that the homosexual is made neurotic because his style of life is beset by thousands of dangers? — George Chauncey

In my early performing days, I played gigs under the pseudonym Whitey McFearsun. I painted my face blue, wore crimson lipstick, and strung on some tight silver latex pants. — Shawn Amos

I'd much rather see a world where, when you make some quirky comment on a blog or news story or you upload a video clip, instead of just a moment of fame for your pseudonym, you'll get 50 bucks. The first time that happens, you'll realise that you're a full-class citizen. You have the potential to make money from the system. — Jaron Lanier

Coincidence is a pseudonym for God, when he does not want to leave his signature". Whenever — Vadim Zeland

If you are a drinker, always use a pseudonym when booking hotels. None of us really know what kind of mess we're going to leave behind, and there's no sense in getting banned from a resort you respect. — Chelsea Handler

In describing the honourable mission I charged him with, M. Pernety informed me that he made my name known to you. This leads me to confess that I am not as completely unknown to you as you might believe, but that fearing the ridicule attached to a female scientist, I have previously taken the name of M. LeBlanc in communicating to you those notes that, no doubt, do not deserve the indulgence with which you have responded.

{Explaining her use of a male pseudonym in a letter to Carl Friedrich Gauss, 1807} — Sophie Germain

Chance is but the pseudonym of God for those particular cases, which he does not choose to acknowledge openly with his own sign manual. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I wanted a pseudonym partly because I'm quite shy and private. I know that sounds ludicrous, but if I should be lucky enough to make a hit, I wanted to be able to shrug off the mantel of Nick Harkaway when I got home. — Nick Harkaway

Bad temper is bad temper even in the apparent privacy of your own hard drive, and harsh and unjust words, when released into the wild, rampage around and do real damage. And as for the practice of saying mean and untrue things while hiding behind a pseudonym - well, if I get a letter like that it goes straight in the bin. But — N. T. Wright

Unfortunately, oppression does not automatically produce only meaningful struggle. It has the ability to call into being a wide range of responses between partial acceptance and violent rebellion. In between you can have, for instance, a vague, unfocused dissatisfaction; or, worst of all, savage infighting among the oppressed, a fierce love-hate entanglement with one another like crabs inside the fisherman's bucket, which ensures that no crab gets away. This is a serious issue for African-American deliberation.
To answer oppression with appropriate resistance requires knowledge of two kinds: in the first place, self-knowledge by the victim, which means awareness that oppression exists, an awareness that the victim has fallen from a great height of glory or promise into the present depths; secondly, the victim must know who the enemy is. He must know his oppressor's real name, not an alias, a pseudonym, or a nom de plume! — Chinua Achebe

Wormholes were first introduced to the public over a century ago in a book written by an Oxford mathematician. Perhaps realizing that adults might frown on the idea of multiply connected spaces, he wrote the book under a pseudonym and wrote it for children. His name was Charles Dodgson, his pseudonym was Lewis Carroll, and the book was Through The Looking Glass. — Michio Kaku

'Envy the Night' was my first stand alone, the first book I'd written in the third person and I loved the feel of that, and it was different but it was also the same. 'So Cold the River,' I knew, was going to be really different, and that's why I thought about doing it as a novella under a pseudonym, because I didn't want to damage my career. — Michael Koryta

Your real name is a mortal name. Now you need one that is immortal, the one that takes the high stage and plays above the rest. You can't be immortal and mortal at the same time. — Keith Buckley

'Mira Grant' is actually my pseudonym. And 'Seanan' is pronounced 'SHAWN-in.' — Seanan McGuire

I suggest to my students that they write under a pseudonym for a week. That allows young men to write as women, and women as men. It allows them a lot of freedom they don't have ordinarily. — Joyce Carol Oates

Chance is the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign. — Theophile Gautier

Nate Shaw is the pseudonym of a black farmer born in Alabama in 1885. — Wendell Berry

It becomes dangerous for somebody who doesn't want their boss to know their sexual preference to use online networks to push for laws supporting gay marriage or same-sex partner rights if they can't do so with a pseudonym. — Rebecca MacKinnon

Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he does not want to sign. — Theophile Gautier

People give me looks of pity and ask me why I want to wallow in my disconnection from a very connected world. It is simple. The world seems way too connected to me now. It seems to be ruining the lives of teenagers and bringing out the bestial cruelty in those who can hide their vileness under the mask of some idiotic pseudonym. I like to sit alone and think about things. Solitude is as precious as coin silver and it takes labor to attain it. — Pat Conroy

The decision to use a pen name was nothing more than a desire to compartmentalise my life. However, I had not thought about an appropriate pseudonym, and since there's an abundance of anagrams in the novel, the idea struck me: why not use an anagram of my name? Hence, Shawn Haigins. — Ashwin Sanghi

I more seriously considered publishing it under a pseudonym than I considered publishing it as fiction. I think the decision to write it as nonfiction happened at the very outset of the process, because the overwhelming impetus for writing this book was to understand what the experience meant, and to override my own reductions and rationalizations, whatever story I had that was not true. It didn't sit well with me and I needed to answer that. That's sort of the reason I write everything. — Melissa Febos

While I was writing I assumed it would be published under a pseudonym, and that liberated me: what I wrote was exactly what I wanted to read. — Nicholson Baker

On the advice of my U.K. publishers, I chose a sexless anonymity and published my first five books under the semi-pseudonym, S. J. Bolton. I was happy. I could hide behind a genderless, classless persona and let my creepy, psychological murder-mysteries speak for themselves. — Sharon Bolton

'The Turner Diaries' is a racist daydream by a former physics teacher writing under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald. — Gore Vidal

[7] The Shadows Code In the 1930's a mysterious crime-fighter called the Shadow was the hero of a popular pulp magazine and an even more popular radio show. Dressed all in black, the Shadow could glide unseen through the darkness to battle the forces of evil. Stories about the Shadow, written by Maxwell Grant (pseudonym for the Shadow's creator, Walter B. Gibson), often contained curious codes. This cipher, from a novelette called The Chain of Death, is one of the best. — Martin Gardner

Chance is the pseudonym God uses when He'd rather not sign His own name. — Anatole France

It's very hard to be an experimental woman writer. If I had been writing under a pseudonym, just initials, I might have a different reputation - but, then I couldn't be myself either. — Joyce Carol Oates

Nom de Plume uses the device of the pseudonym to unite the likes of Charlotte Bronte, Mark Twain, Fernando Pessoa, and Patricia Highsmith into a cohesive yet highly idiosyncratic literary history. Each page affords sparkling facts and valuable insights onto the manufacturing of books and reputations, the keeping and revealing of secrets, the vagaries of private life and public opinion, and the eternally mysterious, often tormented interface between life and literature. — Elif Batuman

When I started writing, I didn't have the common sense to use a pseudonym, so I write under my own name. If I did have a pen name, though, it would be something very historical - something that sounds very sort of Regency ... Sophia something. — Nicola Cornick

It is what it looks like and is called. A jail. it is not a front for something else, not a facade, not a pseudonym. It is real, the real thing, the thing behind the words. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I use a pseudonym, because my real name is very difficult to pronounce, to remember, and to spell. And many people who have been talking about me on television have yet to pronounce it correctly. — Jeff Gannon

I chose to publish the first 'Shopaholic' book under a pseudonym because I wanted it to be judged on its own merits. — Sophie Kinsella

And I can't think of a reason I'd ever use a pseudonym, as I wouldn't want to publish something that I didn't like enough to put my name on it. — Poppy Z. Brite

The Dominion in 1983 was first published as a thirty page booklet in 1883 under the pseudonym Ralph Centennius. (The author's real name is unknown.) This edition has been proof-read word-by-word against a copy of the original on microfiche. (Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions no. 00529) In this text, a mixture of American and British spelling can be found. (For example — Ralph Centennius

The man creates a pseudonym and hides behind it like a worm — Sylvia Plath

I chose a pseudonym, Chris Marker, pronounceable in most languages, because I was very intent on traveling. — Chris Marker

I haven't sworn off Facebook. I'm on Facebook. There's a fan page on Facebook that I will update, but I'm on there myself under a pseudonym, because there were a lot of people able to private-message me on Facebook, and it was getting really weird. — Patton Oswalt

The idea of a pseudonym had been flitting around my brain for a long time, along with its cognate, disappearance. In the 1980s, I published some poems under a pen name in a literary magazine to see what it would feel like. It was fun. It was even a little thrilling. — Michael Redhill

There was also the time that competitors were asked to submit a paragraph of a Graham Greene parody: Greene himself entered under a pseudonym and placed third. — Christopher Hitchens

I sat day after day in my little room, waiting for inspiration to visit me, trying to invent a pseudonym that would express, in a combination of noble and striking sounds, our dream of artistic achievement, a pen name grand enough to compensate for my own feeling of insecurity and helplessness at the idea of everything my mother expected from me. — Romain Gary

One of the advantages of having gone to Penn State was having had a scholar for a mentor - Philip Young. Also, a professional writer named Philip Klass taught there. He was a science fiction writer whose pseudonym was William Tenn. As a professional writer, he brought wisdom to teaching because he'd done it for a living. — David Morrell

In 2008, Bitcoin was mysteriously introduced to the world in an obscure, technical paper written under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. By late 2013, the financial press was filled with reportage on Bitcoin and its dramatic price increase. — Steve Hanke

My pseudonym is 'George R. R. Martin.' That guy's just an actor. — Gwendoline Christie

My name is not Mara Dyer, but my lawyer told me I had to choose something. A pseudonym. A nom de plume, for all of us studying for the SATs. I know that having a fake name is strange, but trust me - it's the most normal thing about my life right now. Even telling you this much probably isn't smart. But without my big mouth, no one would know that a seventeen-year-old who likes Death Cab for Cutie was responsible for the murders. No one would know that somewhere out there is a B student with a body count. And it's important that you know, so you're not next. — Michelle Hodkin