Showing a lack of self-control is in the same vein granting authority to others: 'Perhaps I need someone else to control me.
Authority, when first detecting chaos at its heels, will entertain the vilest schemes to save its orderly facade.
Authority allows two roles: the torturer and the tortured. Twists people into joyless mannequins that fear and hate, while culture plunges into the abyss.
Don’t Give Someone Responsibility without Requisite Authority
Experience is an author’s most valuable asset; experience is the thing that puts the muscle and the breath and the warm blood into the book he writes.
In January 1962, when I was the author of one and a half unperformed plays, I attended a student production of 'The Birthday Party' at the Victoria Rooms in Bristol. Just before it began, I realised that Harold Pinter was sitting in front of me.
I have been given the authority over you, and I am not the best of you. If I do well, help me; and if I do wrong, set me right. Sincere regard for truth.
The best critics do not worry about what the author might think. That would be like a detective worrying about what a suspect might think. Instead, they treat the reader as an intelligent friend, and describe the book as honestly, and as entertaining...
There's no doubt that scientific training helps many authors to write better science fiction. And yet, several of the very best were English majors who could not parse a differential equation to save their lives.
But in a turbulent environment the change is so widespread that it just routes around any kind of central authority. So it is best to manage the bottom-up change rather than try to institute it from the top down.
Authors were shy, unsociable creatures, atoning for their lack of social aptitude by inventing their own companions and conversations.
The plan was simple. Once on the Plain of Idavoll, we were going to follow the immortal strategy of Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh and “announce [our] presence with authority.
I once called construction companies to bid on an addition to the school library so that there would suddenly be people outside, measuring the building. 'Who authorized this?' the principal would ask. The answer: 'Howie Mandel.'
When you're writing first person, all I can see and tell as the author is what that main character can see.
Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?
No one of real intelligence will accept anything just because some authority declares it be so. Don't accept the truth of anything you have not confirmed for yourself.
Governments need to be authorized to provide 'open bank assistance.' The convolutions of Dodd-Frank aimed at 'avoiding' this tactic are ludicrous and will prove to be extremely costly to the system.
Every author really wants to have letters printed in the papers. Unable to make the grade, he drops down a rung of the ladder and writes novels.
Every author really wants to have letters printed in the paper. Unable to make the grade, he drops down a rung of the ladder and writes novels.
When people read his books they have an uncontrollable desire to hang the author in the town square. I can’t think of a higher honor for a writer.
The key factor is whether the agent is a member of the Association of Authors' Representatives, which screens its members and requires them to uphold a Canon of Ethics.
