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Novelists Quotes

Browse 1269 quotes about Novelists.

Novelists Quotes

“I sometimes think novelists write about sex in order to avoid boring themselves to death.”

Thinking Writing Sometimes Order Sex Boring Novelists

Book:Signposts in a Strange Land

Source: Signposts in a Strange Land

“Universities are filled with poets and novelists conducting demure and careful lives in imitation of Eliot and Forster and those others who (through what seems to be have been discretion) made it.”

Has Beens Made Seems Poet Filled University Careful Made It Novelists Imitation Discretion Conducting Eliot Demure

Book:Sex, Death, and Money

Source: Sex, Death, and Money

“In general, of course, a stranger who tries to get you into an automobile is anything but noble, and in general a person who quotes great American novelists is anything but treacherous, and in general a man who says you needn't worry about money, or a man who smokes cigarettes, is somewhere in between.”

People Men Trying Persons Courses Worry Stranger Noble Smoke Novelists Cigarette Automobile Great American Treacherous

Author:Daniel Handler

“Let’s hope the institution of marriage survives its detractors, for without it there would be no more adultery and without adultery two thirds of our novelists would stand in line for unemployment checks.”

Writing Two Would Be Lines Thirds Institutions Checks Novelists Unemployment Adultery

Author:Peter S. Prescott

“On the stem of memory imaginations blossom.”

Mind Imagination Memories Metaphor Novelists Stem Blossoming

Book:No Earthly Estate: God and Patrick Kavanagh : an Anthology

Source: No Earthly Estate: God and Patrick Kavanagh : an Anthology

“Don't be a novelist --- be a statistician. Much more scope for the imagination.”

Imagination Novelists Scope Statistician

Author:Darrell Huff

“Just as the painter thinks with his brush and paints the novelist thinks with his story.”

Thinking Stories Fiction Paint Painter Novelists Brushes

Author:W. Somerset Maugham

“Among the many problems which beset the novelist, not the least weighty is the choice of the moment at which to begin his novel.”

Writing Moments Problem Choices Novel Novelists

Book:Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings

Source: Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings

“Things that appear on the front page of the newspaper as 'fact' are far more dangerous than the games played by a novelist, and can lead to wars.”

War Facts Games Dangerous Fronts Pages Newspapers Novelists

Author:E. L. Doctorow

“The businessman who is a novelist is able to drop in on literature and feel no suicidal loss of esteem if the lady is not at home, and he can spend his life preparing without fuss for the awful interview.”

Ifs Feels Writing Home Able Literature Loss Esteem Awful Novelists Interviews Preparing Businessman Suicidal

Book:The Living Novel

Source: The Living Novel

“No one, at any rate no English writer, has written better about childhood than Dickens. In spite of all the knowledge that has accumulated since, in spite of the fact that children are now comparatively sanely treated, no novelist has shown the same power of entering into the child's point of view.”

Children Facts Views Written Childhood Rate Point Of View Treated Novelists Spite Entering Dickens

Book:All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays

Source: All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays

“You have to go out of your way as a suspense novelist to find situations where the protagonists are somewhat helpless and in real danger.”

Way Real Situation Danger Suspense Novelists Helpless Protagonists Suspense Novels

Author:Nelson DeMille

“They can't yank a novelist like they can a pitcher. A novelist has to go the full nine, even if it kills him.”

Ifs Writing Art Nine Novelists Pitcher

Author:Ernest Hemingway

“I meet kids now who become novelists, poets, write for the theater and movies, who were simply inspired by what they saw during the Spoleto Festival.”

Writing Kids Saws Poet Theater Inspired Novelists Festivals

Author:Pat Conroy

“The novelist screws up his courage in order to invest another two or three years in another attempt to float a boat of original design upon an invented ocean.”

Years Two Order Three Fiction Design Ocean Originals Boat Novelists Three Years Screws Floats Screw Ups

Book:Tugman's Passage

Source: Tugman's Passage

“Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like, all-embracing compassion.”

Writing Art Book Reading Christ Compassion Essentials Novelists Characteristics Really Great Books And Reading Christ Like

Author:Arnold Bennett

“All novelists write in a different way, but I always write in longhand and then do two versions of typescript on a computer.”

Way Writing Two Different Computer Versions Novelists Different Ways

Author:Martin Amis

“Language leads a double life - and so does the novelist. You chat with family and friends, you attend to your correspondence, you consult menus and shopping lists, you observe road signs, and so on. Then you enter your study, where language exists in quite another form - as the stuff of patterned artifice.”

Doe Form Language Stuff Study Lists Novelists Shopping Family And Friends Menus Correspondence Artifice Double Life Road Sign

Book:The Rub of Time: Bellow, Nabokov, Hitchens, Travolta, Trump. Essays and Reportage, 1986-2016

Source: The Rub of Time: Bellow, Nabokov, Hitchens, Travolta, Trump. Essays and Reportage, 1986-2016

“Novelists don't age as quickly as philosophers, who often face professional senility in their late twenties.”

Age Faces Late Twenties Philosopher Novelists Senility Late Twenties

Book:The War Against Cliche: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000

Source: The War Against Cliche: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000

“Novelists tend to go off at 70, and I'm in a funk about it, I've got myself into a real paranoid funk about it, how the talent dies before the body.”

Real Body Dies Talent Novelists Paranoid Funk

Author:Martin Amis

“Historians tell the story of the past, novelists the story of the present.”

Stories Past Novelists Historian

Book:The Goncourt journals, 1851-1870

Source: The Goncourt journals, 1851-1870

“I'm a novelist, so I can't write about ideas unless they're attached to people.”

People Writing I Can Ideas Novelists

Author:Julian Barnes

“There was a time when the average reader read a novel simply for the moral he could get out of it, and however na?ve that may have been, it was a good deal less na?ve than some of the limited objectives he has now. Today novels are considered to be entirely concerned with the social or economic or psychological forces that they will by necessity exhibit, or with those details of daily life that are for the good novelist only means to some deeper end.”

May Mean Has Beens Book Ends Today Force Social Deals Moral Novel Economic Reader Concerned Average Details Deeper Objectives Psychological Novelists Daily Life Exhibits

Author:Flannery O'Connor

“What I was utterly convinced of, and still am, is the idea that the only responsibility the free intellectual has is vis-a-vis himself. He is not responsible to either a political party or a ruler.”

Stills Ideas Political Party Responsibility Politician Intellectual Responsible Convinced Novelists Rulers Political Parties Playwright Freethinker Intellectual Freedom

Author:Tawfiq al-Hakim

“A woman journalist in England asked me why Americans usually wrote about their childhood and a past that happened only in imagination, why they never wrote about the present. This bothered me until I realized why - that a novelist wants to know how it comes out, that he can't be omnipotent writing a book about the present, particularly this one.”

Knows Want Writing Book Past Imagination Know How Happened Childhood England I Realized Journalist Novelists Bothered Writing A Book Omnipotent

Book:Conversations with John Steinbeck

Source: Conversations with John Steinbeck

“Copywriters, journalists, mainstream authors, ghostwriters, bloggers and advertising creatives have as much right to think of themselves as good writers as academics, poets, or literary novelists.”

Thinking Writing Poet Advertising Journalist Novelists Mainstream Good Writers Bloggers

Author:Sara Sheridan

“I was given a dictionary when I was seven, and I read it because I had nothing else to read. I read it the way you read a book.”

Way Book Reading Given Seven Novelists Reading Books Dictionary Essayists

Author:Jamaica Kincaid

“The dominant and most deep-dyed trait of the journalist is his timorousness. Where the novelist fearlessly plunges into the water of self-exposure, the journalist stands trembling on the shore in his beach robe. The journalist confines himself to the clean, gentlemanly work of exposing the grieves and shames of others.”

Self Water Shame Clean Journalism Beach Journalist Novelists Grieving Shore Traits Dominant Exposure Trembling Plunge Robes Exposing Gentlemanly

Author:Janet Malcolm

“Well I'm not a novelist. I've only written one book and that is a memoir.”

Wells Book Written Memoir Novelists

Author:Carly Fiorina

“The few really great-the major novelists ... are significant in terms of the human awareness they promote; awareness of the possibilities of life.”

Humans Term Fiction Awareness Possibility Majors Tradition Significant Novelists Really Great

Author:F. R. Leavis

“By measuring individual human worth, the novelist reveals the full enormity of the State”

Humans States Individual Individuality Novelists Measuring

Author:Ian Mcewan

“For me, as a beginning novelist, all other living writers form a control group for whom the world is a placebo.”

World Form Groups Novelists Placebo

Book:U and I: A True Story

Source: U and I: A True Story

“One more recent novelist to come along is Cormac McCarthy. Him, I like.”

Author:Leslie Fiedler

“All novelists must form their personal pacts in some way with the slowness of their craft. There are some who demand of themselves a 'rate of production,' for whom it's a matter of pride to complete, say, a book every year.”

Way Years Book Matter Form Pride Demand Rate Productions Crafts Novelists Pact Slowness

Author:Graham Swift

“As a novelist, I suppose I can say that I'm highly articulate. But I know, as a person, in other ways, I'm not always articulate. I think we are all, from time to time, inarticulate, at some level, about some things.”

Thinking Knows Way Persons I Can Levels Novelists Inarticulate

Author:Graham Swift

“It's the duty of all novelists, all painters, all musicians, all people who try to make art move: to look for something they feel authentically, without paying attention to styles.”

People Feels Trying Looks Art Moving Attention Style Duty Musician Painter Pay Attention Novelists

Author:Nathalie Sarraute

“Farber had a huge effect on me as a writer. I don't mean I write like him. Farber is, first of all, a great stylist, a great writer. Anyone can read Manny Farber's film criticism, whether that person is a novelist, a poet, another critic, a historian, and learn a lot about writing by reading him.”

Writing Firsts Mean Persons Film Reading Effects Poet Huge Criticism Critics Novelists Historian Great Writers Stylist Film Criticism

Author:Greil Marcus

“To sing a song is quite different than to write a poem. I'm not and never will be a novelist, but to write a novel is not the same thing as writing a play. There is a difference in form, but essentially what you're after is the same thing.”

Writing Different Play Form Song Differences Novel Novelists

Author:Sam Shepard

“Noir is dead for me because historically, I think it's a simple view. I've taken it as far as it can go. I think I've expanded on it a great deal, taken it further than any other American novelist.”

Thinking Simple Views Deals Taken Novelists Noir

Book:Conversations with James Ellroy

Source: Conversations with James Ellroy

“I think the hardest part of writing is revising. And by that I mean the following: A novelist has to create the piece of marble and then chip away to find the figure in it.”

Thinking Writing Mean Pieces Figures Following Hardest Novelists Chips Marble Revising

Author:Chaim Potok

“First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.”

Source: On Booze (New Directions Pearls)

“Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.”

“The great thing about being a novelist is that you organize your own day.”

Great Things Novelists Organize

Author:Sophie Kinsella

“Nothing is as obnoxious as other people's luck.”

People Success Literature Luck Envy Jealousy Novelists Good Luck Obnoxious

Book:Collected Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works

Source: Collected Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works

“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.”

“As you know, I am a novelist, and I really want to write novels. But I knew enough about the Dreyfus case to understand immediately why what happened to Dreyfus was not merely a cause celebre from the end of the 19th century, but an event that could be shown to teach us lessons of the greatest importance for our own time.”

Knows Want Writing Ends Enough Causes Teach Cases Novel Happened Century Events Lessons Importance Novelists 19th Century

Author:Louis Begley

“I don't think I'm a natural novelist. Plot is definitely one of my weaker points. I've been working on it a long time, and it's not getting much better.”

Thinking Long Natural Long Time Novelists Plot

Author:Rick Bass

“I think a novelist must be more tender with living or 'real' people. The moral imperative of having been entrusted with their story looms before you every day, in every sentence.”

People Thinking Real Stories Moral Sentences Novelists Imperatives

Author:Rick Bass

“Yeah, I have the detail-obsessed, controlling personality of a novelist, but I somehow ended up writing plays.”

Writing Play Personality Yeah Details Novelists Obsessed

Author:Annie Baker

“I really think more fledgling novelists - and many current and even established novelists - should get out into the real world and cover local politics, sports, culture, and crime and write it up on deadline.”

Thinking World Should Writing Real Culture Sports Crime Currents Locals Novelists Real World Deadline Fledglings

Author:C. J. Box