Hawthorne Author Quotes

Those who can write, write. Those who can't, criticize.

she wanted to know what American writers I liked. "Hawthorne, Henry James, Emily Dickinson…" "No, living." Ah, well, hmm, let's see: how difficult, the rival factor being what it is, for a contemporary author, or would-be author, to confess admiration for another. At last I said, "Not Hemingway—a really dishonest man, the closet-everything. Not Thomas Wolfe—all that purple upchuck; of course, he isn't living. Faulkner, sometimes: Light in August. Fitzgerald, sometimes: Diamond as Big as the Ritz, Tender Is the Night. I really like Willa Cather. Have you read My Mortal Enemy?" With no particular expression, she said, "Actually, I wrote it.

So that was it: an unhealthy chef, a blind psychic, a war historian, a children’s author, a French performance poet, Hawthorne and me. Not quite the magnificent seven, I couldn’t help thinking.

I like big back-stories and I cannot lie.

Hone your writing skills as if they were your finest weapons of war. For in the literary arena, your pen will truly be your sword.

is a little remarkable, that—though disinclined to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personal friends—an autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public. The first time was three or four years since, when I favoured the reader—inexcusably, and for no earthly reason that either the indulgent reader or the intrusive author could imagine—with a description of my way of life in the deep quietude

Writer's Block: making authors miserable since the Stone Age.

Reading consists of perusing razor-thin slices of perpetuity, wrenched from the heart of a murdered tree, and infused with the dark blood that swirls within the hidden depths of every writer's soul. It is their combined angst - the author's and the tree's - that we partake of when we immerse ourselves in the pages of a book.

You’ve been thrown out, like me, and now you’re on the sidelines, scrubbing around for whatever petty cash you can persuade the police to throw your way and employing a second-rate hack author to write about you because you need the money. That’s what you’ve come to and I’m not afraid of you. Hawthorne Investigates? You’re pathetic!

Herman Melville came to see me at the Consulate, looking much as he used to do (a little paler, and perhaps a little sadder), in a rough outside coat, and with his characteristic gravity and reserve of manner.... [W]e soon found ourselves on pretty much our former terms of sociability and confidence. Melville has not been well, of late; ... and no doubt has suffered from too constant literary occupation, pursued without much success, latterly; and his writings, for a long while past, have indicated a morbid state of mind.... Melville, as he always does, began to reason of Providence and futurity, and of everything that lies beyond human ken, and informed me that he had "pretty much made up his mind to be annihilated"; but still he does not seem to rest in that anticipation; and, I think, will never rest until he gets hold of a definite belief. It is strange how he persists -- and has persisted ever since I knew him, and probably long before -- in wondering to-and-fro over these deserts, as dismal and monotonous as the sand hills amid which we were sitting. He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other. If he were a religious man, he would be one of the most truly religious and reverential; he has a very high and noble nature, and better worth immortality than most of us. [after what would be their last meeting]

Would that all excellent books were foundlings, without father or mother, that so it might be, we could glorify them, without including their ostensible authors.

Almost two hundred thousand books are published in the UK every year and although some of them will have the advantage of a well-known author attached, the vast majority have just two or three words on a surface measuring no more than six by nine inches to sell themselves. Titles have to be short, smart and meaningful, easy to read, easy to remember and original. That's asking a lot.

Because, when one comes to America, one finds that there is always a certain slightly devilish resistance in the American landscape, and a certain slightly bitter resistance in the white man’s heart. Hawthorne gives this. But Cooper glosses it over.

There’s something about Oxford that has always appealed to authors and it seems to me that it has somehow seeped into their work. Think of Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Iris Murdoch and, more recently, Philip Pullman. It’s hard to imagine them living anywhere else.

The truth seems to be, however, that, when he casts his leaves forth upon the wind, the author addresses, not the many who will fling aside his volume, or never take it up, but the few who will understand him, better than most of his schoolmates or lifemates.

Among those who could read, books were prized possessions. Words on paper were powerful magic, seductive as music, sharp as a knife at times, or gentle as a kiss. Friendships and love affairs blossomed as men and women read to each other in summer meadows and winter kitchens. Pages were ambrosia in their hands. A new novel or collection of poems was something everybody talked about. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shakespeare, Bronte, Austen, Dickens, Keats, Emerson, Cooper, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Twain. To read these authors was to go on a grand adventure and see things as you never had before, see yourself as you never had before.

The truth seems to be, however, that, when he casts his leaves forth upon the wind, the author addresses, not the many who will fling aside his volume, or never take it up, but the few who will understand him, better than most of his schoolmates and lifemates. Some authors, indeed, do far more than this, and indulge themselves in such confidential depths of revelation as could fittingly be addressed, only and exclusively, to the one heart and mind of perfect sympathy; as if the printed book, thrown at large on the wide world, were certain to find out the divided segment of the writer's own nature, and complete his circle of existence by bringing him into communion with it.

The manner of the woman was ungracious; but her words were true. They saw that their presence could do nothing towards the alleviation of the misery they witnessed; and they felt that mere curiosity would not authorize a longer intrusion. So soon, therefore, as they had relieved, according to their power, the poverty that seemed to be the least evil of this cottage, they emerged into the open air.

I felt like I was back in Hawthorne’s Salem, learning the worst lesson of the witch trials: the public will bow to authority, no matter how corrupt, if they believe that authority is curtailing a greater threat—even if the complicity of the authority becomes increasingly explicit. The longing for a legal system to combat an almost otherworldly evil overrides the public’s ability to see the man-made evil right in front of them.

Phœbe went accordingly, but perplexed herself, meanwhile, with queries as to the purport of the scene she had just witnessed, and also whether judges, clergymen, and other characters of that eminent stamp and respectability, could really, in any single instance, be otherwise than just and upright men. A doubt of this nature has a most disturbing influence, and, if shown to be a fact, comes with fearful and startling effect on the minds of the trim, orderly, and limit-loving class, in which we maybe find our little country-girl. Dispositions more boldly speculative may derive a stern enjoyment from the discovery, since there must be evil in the world, that a high man is as likely to grasp his share of it as a low one. A wider scope of the view, and a deeper insight, may see rank, dignity, and station, all proved illusory, so far as regards their claim to human reverence, and yet not feel as if the universe were thereby tumbled head-long into chaos.

Antiracism calls us to live a life full of intentional acts, to come to new understandings and commit to new ways to live justly--not to repeat patterns of oppression. Two of the biggest obstacles to becoming antiracist are nostalgia and convenience. Nostalgia will prohibit us from seeing multiple perspectives, from thinking critically about the harm we are causing because we are centering our own comfort. Choosing to support racist authors, actors, and production companies because we have warm and fuzzy feelings about them is perpetuating racism.

Writing was a forbidden game, Bei Dao (the Chinese dissident poet) said, that could cost one’s life. The poetry they published amounted to a new language, since “for thirty years the Chinese language there had no personal voice at all.” The official line on Bei Dao’s poetry was that it was politically subversive because it expressed intimate thoughts, asserting the rights of the individual by his or her own private experience. And the more obscure Bei Dao’s poems became, the more subversive the authorities considered him. He said, 'on the one hand, poetry is useless. It can’t change the world materially. On the other hand it is a basic part of human existence. It came into the world when humans did. It’s what make human beings human.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, a friend of Margaret Fuller’s in Concord who followed her path to the Continent several years after her death, undertook an experiment in fictional form when he put aside writing stories in favor of longer narratives. He preferred to call his books “Romances,” not novels. “When a writer calls his work a Romance,” Hawthorne explained in his preface to The House of the Seven Gables, “he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a Novel.” The novelist, in Hawthorne’s terms, aims to achieve “a very minute fidelity” to experience, whereas the author of a romance may “bring out or mellow the lights and deepen and enrich the shadows of the picture” while still maintaining strict allegiance to “the truth of the human heart.

The traditional Roman wedding was a splendid affair designed to dramatize the bride’s transfer from the protection of her father’s household gods to those of her husband. Originally, this literally meant that she passed from the authority of her father to her husband, but at the end of the Republic women achieved a greater degree of independence, and the bride remained formally in the care of a guardian from her blood family. In the event of financial and other disagreements, this meant that her interests were more easily protected. Divorce was easy, frequent and often consensual, although husbands were obliged to repay their wives’ dowries. The bride was dressed at home in a white tunic, gathered by a special belt which her husband would later have to untie. Over this she wore a flame-colored veil. Her hair was carefully dressed with pads of artificial hair into six tufts and held together by ribbons. The groom went to her father’s house and, taking her right hand in his, confirmed his vow of fidelity. An animal (usually a ewe or a pig) was sacrificed in the atrium or a nearby shrine and an Augur was appointed to examine the entrails and declare the auspices favorable. The couple exchanged vows after this and the marriage was complete. A wedding banquet, attended by the two families, concluded with a ritual attempt to drag the bride from her mother’s arms in a pretended abduction. A procession was then formed which led the bride to her husband’s house, holding the symbols of housewifely duty, a spindle and distaff. She took the hand of a child whose parents were living, while another child, waving a hawthorn torch, walked in front to clear the way. All those in the procession laughed and made obscene jokes at the happy couple’s expense. When the bride arrived at her new home, she smeared the front door with oil and lard and decorated it with strands of wool. Her husband, who had already arrived, was waiting inside and asked for her praenomen or first name. Because Roman women did not have one and were called only by their family name, she replied in a set phrase: “Wherever you are Caius, I will be Caia.” She was then lifted over the threshold. The husband undid the girdle of his wife’s tunic, at which point the guests discreetly withdrew. On the following morning she dressed in the traditional costume of married women and made a sacrifice to her new household gods. By the late Republic this complicated ritual had lost its appeal for sophisticated Romans and could be replaced by a much simpler ceremony, much as today many people marry in a registry office. The man asked the woman if she wished to become the mistress of a household (materfamilias), to which she answered yes. In turn, she asked him if he wished to become paterfamilias, and on his saying he did the couple became husband and wife.

He assumed a good prone, legs splayed and bent a little, right leg pulled up a bit more than the left, both feet turned out with the heels down. He rested the forestock on his pack, wrapping the sling around his left arm. There was some debate about this technique, but Mick was squarely in the two-wrap camp. He didn’t slip his left hand under the buttstock but instead slid it along the forestock until it reached that old familiar spot, and he tucked the rifle into his shoulder good. You wanted to get it tucked in just right, because that big magnum was one rifle that spoke with authority. You pull the trigger on a .338 Win Mag, especially from the prone with Mick’s bear loads, and it’ll make a man out of you right then and there. … Mick kept still for just a second, taking the weight of the rifle in his bones and letting gravity take him and make him part of the Earth itself. He put the crosshairs exactly where he wanted them, paused his breathing at the natural break after a normal exhale, then simply willed that beautiful custom trigger to break. Break it did, crisp and clean like always, and the 225 grain bullet flew downrange at almost three thousand feet per second. It reached the deck in less than half a second, about a half second before the sound of the shot. The Very Last War WH Hawthorne

Murder in the Crooked House by Soji Shimada, or The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo, a true master of the art and the author of almost eighty books. They are both fiendish and elegant.

The man oozed dominance and mystery and authority that made me want to drop to my knees and say things like yes sir, and please daddy.

Anyhow, I've begun on the story we discussed. I will not refer specifically to what you said, but I've decided that it will have as its author Hawthorne Abendsen, the novelist in my novel MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE who wrote THE GRASSHOPPER LIES HEAVY. I wrote & wrote . . . after all, I wrote my 4th novel EYE IN THE SKY in two weeks, so this merely shows I'm in love with what I'm doing. The title of Abendsen's yarn is, "A Man For No Countries," because he is unwanted in the USA where the Asshole Axis rule, and certainly not in Europe where Germany rules from . . . I did bio notes, the uncorrected carbons of which I'm enclosing; they were improved in a second draft, and can/will be cut as needed. And, as to the story, I finished the holographic first draft last night about the time our tomcat Pinky wants indoors to be fed, which is quite late, and at which time nothing, even Pinky, gets me out of bed. It is a short story, but I think a lot of it, Phil. I really do, and when I turn out a lousy one I usually know it and the other way around. I'll send you a carbon of the final, not of the rough, since the rough is in holo. Now, a technical problem. To whom do I send the yarn when I'm done? By contract, it must be to Scott Meredith; that is determined by law. But my own name must be on it, on the far left upper corner, not under the title, so he can see who sent it, and hence pay me. That is, receive pay. Who does pay, by the way? Ed Ferman or whoever buys it (if anyone)? Does it just go onto the market like all stories, OR—and this is crucial, maybe—should I mention to Scott Meredith that you should be involved . . . without mentioning certain details held in confidence between us? How do I handle it? I will sell it, in any case; I wrote MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE in 1961 and ever since "they" have begged (well, asked me) to do more as a sequel. This story is in fact a follow-up, of Abendsen's life since, besides being an intrinsic plot-idea-theme story. So it'll sell, and Ed Ferman does like my stuff; he has commissioned a set of three stories from me, the last three I have done, including one for FINAL STATE or EDGE or whatever with Malzberg, and so would tend to want to buy it. So advise me, as I type up the final. And thanks for getting my literary ass in gear; God bless, Phil. [The story was never completed or published.]

Hawthorne finally found his life’s calling. “I do not want to be a doctor and live by men’s diseases; nor a minister to live by their sins; nor a lawyer and live by their quarrels,” he wrote passionately to his mother. “So I don’t see that there is anything left for me but to be an author.

Reading Moby-Dick, we are in the presence of a writer who spent several impressionable years on a whaleship, internalized everything he saw, and seven or so years later, after internalizing Shakespeare, Hawthorne, the Bible, and much more, found the voice and the method that enabled him to broadcast his youthful experiences into the future. And this, ultimately, is where the great, unmatched potency of Moby-Dick, the novel, resides. It comes from an author who not only was there but possessed the capacious and impressionable soul required to appreciate the wonder of what he was seeing.

Voldemort cannot kill Harry with any wand because in order for the Killing Curse to work, the caster has to mean it, and Voldemort doesn’t realize that he identifies with Harry too much, sees too much of Harry’s humanity, to kill him the same way he has killed others. But just in case, Harry—and the author—derive some support from the connection that the hawthorn wand and the Elder Wand now have. The Elder Wand has submitted to disarmament from the hawthorn wand once before. Harry is conscious of drawing on that parallel history as he casts his signature magic using Draco’s wand (emphasis mine).

When there is fear,I will have my pen hold high,when the wonders of night give its light, I lie behind the familiar world with a strange crown, not of Lilly,nor of violets,not of hawthorn,not of maple,but burthen words my fallen tears build an avenger’s crown.

Debut author Elisabeth Scott knocked it out of the park with Thirteen Scars! This riveting romantic suspense gripped me from page one and never let up. The plot was filled with twists and turns and kept me guessing until the very end.