Author Image Quotes

Unfortunately, there are writers whose only concern is how good they could make themselves look on a title.

A number of people have read 'Two-Way Split' and made certain assumptions about what the author's like, and I'm highly disappointing to them. I don't drink, I don't eat meat; that's very disappointing for a hard-boiled writer.

The whole ecosystem of celebrity has broken down for writers. If you go back to the '50s, '60s, and '70s, writers were on TV a lot, and they were allowed to misbehave a lot. Truman Capote was a pop figure, but it wasn't until he went on David Susskind's show and had that extraordinary voice and manner that everyone could imitate, that he really took off as a figure. Norman Mailer and Vidal, the same thing. The bestselling writers now, there's no great animal energy with them.

I am particularly wary of authors who put themselves on the cover of their own book.

Meeting writers is always so disappointing. I got over wanting to meet live writers quite a long time ago. There is this terrific book that has changed your life, and then you meet the author, and he has shifty eyes and funny shoes and he won't talk about anything except the injustice of the United States income tax structure toward people with fluctuating income, or how to breed Black Angus cows, or something.

Whether you're starving in a garret or living in a castle like J. K. Rowling, I had this image of the author as a flawless, composed individual, serene in the knowledge they were creating art.

I do tend to look at my books in many ways as conceptual fiction, even to the point where I think the author's photograph is part of the package. And I have gone out of my way to select the photograph to connect to the subject matter of each book.

I've never written a children's book, but when people meet me for the first time and I say I write books, they invariably reply, 'Children's books?' Maybe it's something about my face.

I think maybe I might have to do what some other authors do, which is do a variation on my name, just to send readers the message that, 'Yep, this is me, but this is a different part of me. So brace yourself.'

People have expectations of what you are as a writer. And writers, on the whole, don't like to be classified.

I know when I go and see a writer, the first thing I think to myself is, 'Are they the character in the book?' You just can't help it; it's the way people are.

I read a lot fewer thrillers than I think people assume I do.

It's that kind of thing that readers have. I have it as a reader myself: that expectation that the writer will be that person. Then I meet other writers and realize that they're not.

I don't think I'm an unkind person, I don't think my books are unkind, and I don't think my readers are unkind.

I've always thought that one of the least successful encounters is meeting a writer one admires. For one thing, writers are generally much kinder, more empathetic, more generous people on the page than they are in person.

I understand that fictional men aren't real. Not 'really real'. I know this the same way I wonder if my readers are disappointed when they meet me.

My own life has been doubly disconnected, as I've written books under two different names. As an author, your name almost becomes a brand; readers know what to expect.

I think people might think, oh, I don't want to approach the big famous author because it's embarrassing, but then they think for two seconds about it and realize, this is, like, a toilet bowl reader.

Do not make the writer stand behind a podium. Anything but. A podium reeks of the lecture hall. A music stand, on the other hand, is nicely minimal and lends the writer - who usually needs all the help s/he can get - a musician's second-hand cool-factor.

Writers often feel obliged to adopt some sort of public appearance.

Some writing programs are very much like, you come in, and you have a niche that becomes yours, and, you know, you're the dude from the streets. Or you're the woman who was in prison.

It's better not to know authors personally, because the real person never corresponds to the image you form of him from reading his books.

If I present a boring personal life to my readers, it's going to be harder for them to think of my novels as thrilling.

Tradesmen regard an author with a mixed feeling of terror, compassion and curiosity.

I don't think I knew that you could be a novelist. I think a lot of my students are in the same condition. I thought it was unreachable, that it was sort of dead people. It took me a long time - I think I was well into novel writing before I really thought, 'Actually, this is a valid pastime.'