Author Persona Quotes

I'm not funny. People assume that because my books are funny, I'll be funny in real life. It's the inevitable disappointment of meeting me.

The public figure of the writer, the writer-character, the 'personality-cult' of the author, are all becoming for me more and more intolerable in others, and consequently in myself.

'Seanan McGuire' is my real name; if I'm being silly and third-person about it, she's a frequently cranky, foul-mouthed Disney Princess on vacation in the real world, where she studies diseases, cuddles reptiles, watches lots of horror movies, and goes to as many corn fields as possible.

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.

Writers should be read but not seen. Rarely are they a winsome sight.

I was never a wet-eyed, passionate writer; I was always a policeman.

Some men are more interesting than their books but my book is more interesting than its man.

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.

Theodor Geisel (otherwise known as Dr. Seuss) spent his workdays ensconced in his private studio, the walls lined with sketches and drawings, in a bell-tower outside his La Jolla, California, house. Geisel was a much more quiet man than his jocular rhymes suggest. He rarely ventured out in public to meet his young readership, fretting that kids would expect a merry, outspoken, Cat in the Hat–like figure, and would be disappointed with his reserved personality. “In mass, [children] terrify me,” he admitted.

As I get older and write more books I'm definitely allowing the humorous side of my personality more rein in my work.

It's funny, because people always say when they meet me, having read me - or they read me, having met me - that they are struck by how the tone is pretty similar, in real life and in the books.

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.'

I'm not really a mainstream novelist!

I'm teetotal and a vegetarian, which is sometimes a surprise to people who meet me expecting me to resemble one of the characters in my books.

I've noticed that, with many of the authors I like, I tend to think I would dislike them as human beings or that there'd be a healthy amount of debate if I ever did meet them.

I think a lot of people want me to be like the characters in the books: they want that kind of congruence.

I'm not really a mass market writer.

When I used to teach writing, what I would tell my playwriting students is that while you're writing your plays, you're also writing the playwright. You're developing yourself as a persona, as a public persona. It's going to be partly exposed through the writing itself and partly created by all the paraphernalia that attaches itself to writing. But you aren't simply an invisible being or your own private being at work. You're kind of a public figure, as well.

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

If there's a poster boy for the fact that all essays are written through personae, it's Crèvecoeur.

In fact, in Europe, I'm more kind of this bloke what writes lots of stuff.

Who do readers expect to see when they pick up this book? Who has won the Most Troubled Romantic Lead at the BookWorld Awards seventy-seven times in a row? Me. All me.

I'm a strange kind of author - I like assignments. I wasn't clever enough to invent an iconic figure like Salander, but she's my kind of girl.

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.

I wanted to be Carrie Vaughn the awesome writer, not the chick who writes the 'Kitty' books.