“The fact is that in this day and age I don't think any novelist can assume that a book will get attention.” ThinkingBookFactsAgeAttentionAssumingNovelistsThis Day Author:Curtis Sittenfeld
“As a novelist, you deepen your characters as you go, adding layers. As a reporter, you try to peel layers away: observing subjects enough to get beneath the surface, re-questioning a source to find the facts. But these processes aren't so different.” TryingDifferentEnoughCharacterFactsProcessSubjectsSourceSurfaceNovelistsLayersQuestioningReportersObservingBeneath The Surface Author:Amy Waldman
“History is the history of human behavior, and human behavior is the raw material of fiction. Most people recognize that novelists do research to get the facts right - how a glove factory works, for example, or how courtesans in imperial Japan dressed.” PeopleHumansFactsFictionExampleMaterialsBehaviorResearchNovelistsJapanFactoriesHuman BehaviorGlovesRaw MaterialsCourtesans Author:Amy Waldman
“Age could not wither nor custom stale her infinite monotony: in fact, neither Age nor Custom could do anything (as they said, their voices rising) with the American novelist Gertrude Johnson.” SaidFactsAgeVoiceInfiniteNovelistsRisingCustomsThey SaidJohnsonStaleMonotonyGertrude Book:Pictures from an Institution: A Comedy Source: Pictures from an Institution: A Comedy
“The thought of the novelist lies not in the remarks of his characters or even in their introspection but in the plight he has invented for his characters - in the juxtaposition of those characters and in the lifelike ramifications of the ensemble they make: their density, their substantiality, their lived existence actualized in all its nuanced particulars, is in fact his thought metabolized.” CharacterFactsLyingExistenceNovelistsIntrospectionRemarksEnsemblePlightDensityJuxtapositionRamifications Author:Philip Roth
“The lucidity of the battle narratives, the vigor of the prose, the strong feeling for the men from generals to privates who did the fighting, are all controlled by a constant sense of how it happened and what it was all about. Foote has the novelist's feeling for character and situation, without losing the historian's scrupulous regard for recorded fact. The Civil War is likely to stand unequalled.” MenWarCharacterFactsFeelingsFightingStrongSituationHappenedHe ManBattleLosingRegardConstantNarrativeNovelistsCivil WarProseControlledHistorianVigorStrong FeelingLucidity Author:Walter Millis