A Quote by Maxwell Perkins

The book belongs to the author.

Maxwell Perkins

Quote Topics

Author Belongs Book

Quote Author

Maxwell Perkins
American - Editor
September 20, 1884 - June 17, 1947

An author writes a book, and that's the book at that point. And if the author writes the book again, then somehow something has gone wrong, if you see what I mean.

Terry Pratchett

No one really knows the value of book tours. Whether or not they're good ideas, or if they improve book sales. I happen to think the author is the last person you'd want to talk to about a book. They hate it by that point; they've already moved on to a new lover. Besides, the author never knows what the book is about anyway.

Rosecrans Baldwin

As an author, one of the most important things I think you can do once you've written a novel is step back. When the book is out, it belongs to the readers and you can't stand there breathing over their shoulders.

Madeline Miller

Whether the author intended a symbolic resonance to exist in her book is irrelevant. All that matters is whether it's there. Because the book does not exist for the benefit of the author, the book exists for the benefit of YOU. If we as readers can have a bigger and richer experience with the world as a result of reading a symbol and that symbol wasn't intended by the author, WE STILL WIN.

John Green

I am a conventional science fiction author. But that said, once your work is published, it no longer belongs to you. It belongs to the readers and they will derive all sorts of interpretations.

Liu Cixin

I believe the writer... should always be the final judge. I have always held to that position and have sometimes seen books hurt thereby, but at least as often helped. The book belongs to the author.

Maxwell Perkins

I have a passionate desire for personal privacy. I want to stand before the world, for good or bad, on the book I wrote, not on what I say in letters to friends, not on my husband and my home life, the way I dress, my likes and dislikes, et cetera. My book belongs to anyone who has the price, but nothing of me belongs to the public.

Margaret Mitchell

Why couldn't the world that concerns us- be a fiction? And if somebody asked, 'but to be a fiction there surely belongs an author?'- couldn't one answer simply: 'Why? Doesn't this "belongs" perhaps belong to the fiction, too?'

Friedrich Nietzsche

Frequently, an author gets "orphaned" at a publisher. What this means is that an editor buys their book, then ends up getting fired, promoted, or transferred to a different job somewhere else. It sucks for the author because suddenly the person who liked your book enough to buy it isn't around to help you edit and promote it.

Patrick Rothfuss

I'm a commercial writer, not an author. Margaret Mitchell was an author. She wrote one book.

Mickey Spillane

It is always dishonest for a reviewer to review the author instead of the author's book.

Edward Abbey

Reading a book should be a conversation between you and the author. Presumably he knows more about the subject than you do; if not, you probably should not be bothering with his book. But understanding is a two-way operation; the learner has to question himself and question the teacher, once he understands what the teacher is saying. Marking a book is literally an expression of your differences or your agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him.

Mortimer Adler

Authors have a greater right than any copyright, though it is generally unacknowledged or disregarded. They have a right to the reader's civility. There are favorable hours for reading a book, as for writing it, and to these the author has a claim. Yet many people think that when they buy a book they buy with it the right to abuse the author.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There's always a slight tension when you sell a book to Hollywood, especially a nonfiction book. The author wants his story told intact; the nonfiction author wants it told accurately.