Novelist Quotes · Page 5

As a novelist, you have to be free. Books can't be an act of filial duty.

— Richard Flanagan

I hated being a novelist when I was 20 - I had nothing to write about.

— A. S. Byatt

I am a better novelist than a poet, playwright, or essayist.

— Jose Saramago

Not until my middle thirties did I consider myself a novelist.

— Rita Mae Brown

My temperament is not geared to that of a novelist.

— Philip Levine

I get a lot of energy from making things up, which is why I feel I'm a novelist.

— Hisham Matar

It is less the business of the novelist to tell us what happened than to show how it happened.

— V. S. Pritchett

He was interviewed in the early '60s by a young novelist, Pati Hill.

— George Plimpton

I was one of those kids who never wanted to be anything but a novelist. And I don't know a lot of…

— Scott Turow

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…

— Rick Bass

“I wish people would think of me as a musician who writes novels, instead of a novelist who writes music on the…

— Anthony Burgess

If you tell a novelist, 'Life's not like that', he has to do something about it. The poet simply replies, 'No, but…

— Philip Larkin

If you're a good journalist, you can probably be a good screenwriter or novelist. That skillset travels.

— Cord Jefferson

I hadn't ever felt any particular calling to be a novelist, and I clearly remember telling a friend of mine about six…

— Gabrielle Zevin

“I was forced to wander, having no one, forced by my nature to keep wandering because wandering was the only thing that…

— Roman Payne

I am a novelist. I traffic in subtleties, and my goal in writing a novel is to leave the reader not knowing…

— Teju Cole

I became a novelist because of 'Gone With the Wind,' or more precisely, my mother raised me up to be a 'Southern'…

— Pat Conroy

I use these senses - touch, sight, feel and smell - as triggers that invite readers or propel them into the scene.…

— David Morrell

The novelist's obligation to remake the sensuous texture of a vanished world is also the historian's. The strongest fiction writers often do…

— Simon Schama

The life of a bestselling novelist sounds like it ought to be spectacularly glamorous and fun, but in fact I spend most…

— Jane Green

I always wanted to be a writer, and I did want to be a novelist. In college I took a couple of…

— Anne Fadiman

It is at least worth arguing that there is a modicum of the creative novelist in all of us, and that this…

— Humphrey Bogart

I'm only a novelist on occasion. Many of my books are made up of brief texts collected together, short stories, or else…

— Italo Calvino

The professions of novelist and journalist are very separate. As a novelist, you are ultimately working for yourself. Yes, you need the…

— Jon Weisman

What is the difference between the novelist and the liar? At some moments, I have often wondered.

— Amitava Kumar

“I realised early on that being an author is a hugely misunderstood job.”

— Sara Sheridan

When I was a child, I loved making stories, so I thought maybe I would be a novelist.

— Hirokazu Kore-eda

Two things a novelist can do with a hat: Talk through it or pull a rabbit from it.

— Peter S. Prescott

My dad was very successful as a journalist, so I didn't want to be one. I wanted to be a novelist.

— Giles Coren

I had thought of writing, actually, and that later on I'd be a novelist.

— Francois Truffaut

The novelist helps us to see things we might not notice otherwise.

— Madeleine L'Engle

“Perhaps, after all, the greatest psychologist is not the metaphysician but the novelist.”

— Walter Besant

The job of the novelist is to invent: to embroider, to color, to embellish, to make things up.

— Donna Tartt

A novelist has a specific poetic license which also applies to his own life.

— Jerzy Kosinski

“As a historical novelist, there are few jobs more retrospective.”

— Sara Sheridan

I'm a novelist, that's how I make my livelihood, and I concentrate on the novels.

— David Mitchell

For a novelist, it's kind of an onerous burden to represent an entire culture.

— Khaled Hosseini

Whether he be an original or a plagiarist, man is the novelist of himself.

— Jose Ortega y Gasset

I was writing from the time I was 12 years old, but I originally wanted to be a novelist.

— Christopher McQuarrie

I'm a very old-fashioned novelist. I write 19th-century novels, where a lot of rules apply.

— John Irving