Author's Purpose Quotes

There is no motivation higher than being a good writer.

I became a writer because I love books, and I believe in their power.

Anybody who writes doesn't like to be misunderstood.

Mostly I'm just writing books for the public, and so I try to describe for the public what the choices are, what they might have to expect in the future and so by warning people ahead of time maybe you have an effect.

I have never had a point in my life to make. I'm just trying to entertain the reader.

The existence of the writer is to write, and to write is to tell the truth.

Every single day, I get letters - very moving, overwhelming letters - testifying how much my books have meant to people in times of crisis in their lives, when they were very ill, say. If I ever doubted that writing could play an important part in people's lives, I don't doubt that now.

Some people write to please, to soothe, to console. Others to provoke, to challenge, to exasperate and infuriate. I've always found the second approach the more pleasing.

When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, 'I am going to produce a work of art.' I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.

I've learned to accept that I'm a children's writer, even if it's not what I set out to become. It's what I should have been all along, and I'll stay in this role as long as I'm a writer.

Whom do I write for? I write for the story. Each story, it seems to me, knows best how it should be told. As I once put my ear to the railroad track, I listen now for the voice of my story.

Every writer follows a theme, and mine is survival. If you can't figure out what a writer's theme is, look at the books you are attracted to.

I'm what happens after death, which is writing.

Man’s writing has but one true sense, which is that which the Author meant when he writ it.

My job is to entertain the readers in such a manner that, when they reach the end of the book, they feel like they've gotten their money's worth.

What you write chooses you.

Do not start a story unless you have an ending in mind. You can change the story's ending if you wish, but you should always have a destination.

If he can give his readers no reason why they should read his book, except that the events happened to him, it is not a valid book.

I'm a firm believer in stories with arcs and beginnings and endings and all that. 'Scott Pilgrim' is sort of one long novel, and it's so long that I get confused and sort of tread water sometimes. But there's definitely a goal to it. People who just dismiss it as shallow, that's their prerogative, but it's not really my intent.

My job is writing for people to enjoy and then writing about a broader and a deeper world.

Your intention for a book is never the same as the reception.

Although many of his other novels are brilliant there is a power in 'Oliver Twist' that I believe Dickens never managed to retrieve. It is as if he was sent to this earth with the sole purpose of writing this book.

If I write novels in a country in which most citizens are illiterate, who then is my community?

I was hoping to build a country and add to its literature. That's why I served in World War II, and that's why I wrote books.

My function as a writer is not story-telling but truth-telling: to make things plain.