I’ve seen this floating around the internet: “To want to meet an author because you like his books is as ridiculous as wanting to meet the goose because you like pate de foie gras.” — Arthur Koestler

I haven’t been able to find the original source of the quotation.

Much more frequently, I see this similar quotation attributed to Margaret Atwood: “Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté.”

This, however, I have found the source: “There’s an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine — “Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté.”

This is from Atwood’s Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing.

So there it is. Atwood indirectly citing Koestler.

(This posting is in no way meant to diminish Atwood’s brilliance in any way or cast any aspersions on her. It’s more a comment about the Internet and the way attributions get lost and/or mangled.)