“Natural writers will often try to force themselves into a form - novel, story, screenplay, or poem - that is not necessarily the appropriate form for the way they see the world... if, in fact, they are writing from the artist's impulse, which is a deep, inchoate vision of some sort of order behind the apparent chaos of life on planet earth, they'll be driven then to express that vision in the creation of the object - the art object.” IfsWorldWayWritingTryingArtFactsStoriesEarthFormArtistOrderForceNaturalBehindsVisionNovelCreationObjectsPlanetsChaosDrivenImpulseAppropriateScreenplaysPlanet Earth Author:Robert Olen Butler
“The only difficulty is to know what bits to choose and what to leave out. Novel-writing is not creation, it is selection.” KnowsWritingBitsNovelCreationDifficultySelectionNovel Writing Book:Letters to a Friend Source: Letters to a Friend
“The Watch is a powerful tale, courageous both in concept and creation: an ancient tale made modern, passed through different narrators in extraordinary shape-shifting prose that makes this not just an important novel, but a remarkable read.” MadeImportantDifferentPowerfulWatchesNovelModernCreationShapesConceptsExtraordinaryAncientTalesProseRemarkableCourageousShiftingNarrators Author:Aminatta Forna
“The base of all artistic genius is the power of conceiving humanity in a new, striking, rejoicing way, of putting a happy world ofits own creation in place of the meaner world of common days, of generating around itself an atmosphere with a novel power of refraction, selecting, transforming, recombining the images it transmits, according to the choice of the imaginative intellect. In exercising this power, painting and poetry have a choice of subject almost unlimited.” WorldWayHumanityChoicesImaginationCommonCreativityNovelSubjectsCreationPaintingGeniusExerciseIntellectArtisticAtmosphereRejoiceUnlimitedImaginativeTransformingTransmitConceivingArtistic GeniusPainting And Poetry Book:The Renaissance Source: The Renaissance
“Most good novelists have been women or homosexuals. The novel is the triumphant evolved creation, one increasingly has to think, of these two groups, who have cooperated more closely in this domain than in any other.” ThinkingHas BeensTwoWomenNovelGroupsCreationNovelistsHomosexualityHomosexualDomainTriumphant Book:U and I: A True Story Source: U and I: A True Story
“Almost any tale of our doings is comic. We are bottomlessly comic to each other. Even the most adored and beloved person is comic to his lover. The novel is a comic form. Language is a comic form, and makes jokes in its sleep. God, if He existed, would laugh at His creation. Yet it is also the case that life is horrible, without metaphysical sense, wrecked by chance, pain and the close prospect of death. Out of this is born irony, our dangerous and necessary tool.” IfsPersonsPainFormLife IsLanguageBornChanceSleepCasesNovelLaughingDangerousCreationLoversJokesToolsHorribleTalesComicIronyBelovedMetaphysicalDoingsBeloved Person Book:The Black Prince Source: The Black Prince
“Ayn Rand held that art is a 're-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgements.' By its nature, therefore, a novel (like a statue or a symphony) does not require or tolerate an explanatory preface; it is a self-contained universe, aloof from commentary, beckoning the reader to enter, perceive, respond.” DoeArtSelfRealityArtistValuesUniverseNovelCreationReaderArt IsPerceiveJudgementTolerateMetaphysicalStatuesSymphonyCommentaryAloofSelf ContainedBeckoning Author:Leonard Peikoff