A straight writer can write a gay novel and not worry about it, and a gay novelist can write about straight people. — Edmund White Copy Share Image
I'm a successful novelist, and I've been a lucky one, so I don't want to cry the poor mouth. Writing has never… — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
A movie will do in one second, with one image, what it will take a novelist at least a page to describe. — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
A novelist can never be his own reader, except when he is ridding his manuscript of syntax errors, repetitions, or the occasional… — Patrick Modiano Copy Share Image
“The novelist is like a scout commissioned to go and see what is happening in the depth of the soul. He comes… — Julien Green Copy Share Image
If the novelist shares his or her problems with the characters, he or she is able to study his personal unconscious. — Manuel Puig Copy Share Image
“My first editor used to say that eighty-five per cent of what goes on in a novelist's head is none of his… — Stephen King Copy Share Image
The art of the novelist is not unrelated to the illness of multiple personality disorder. It's a much milder form. But the… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
“People without hope do not write novels … [Writing fiction] is a plunge into reality and it’s very shocking to the system.… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I couldn't have been a novelist without being a mother. It gives you a unique witness point of the growth of a… — Carol Shields Copy Share Image
The businessman who is a novelist is able to drop in on literature and feel no suicidal loss of esteem if the… — V. S. Pritchett Copy Share Image
I enjoy journalism; anybody does. You see the results immediately; you've got an immediate audience instead of having to wait for your… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
“I remember calling the council's cemetery department to ask about body decomposition in different soil types. Once they had verified that I… — Sara Sheridan Copy Share Image
The only excuse for a novelist, aside from the entertainment and vicarious living his books give the people who read them, is… — John Dos Passos Copy Share Image
The higher processes are all processes of simplification. The novelist must learn to write, and then he must unlearn it; just as… — Willa Cather Copy Share Image
“The novelist might be greater possible help to us if they painted life as it is, and human feelings in their true… — William Dean Howells Copy Share Image
The novelist is the person who spends a lot of his or her day thinking about the human drama and emotional complexity. — Thane Rosenbaum Copy Share Image
“Ruth Cole was a novelist; novelists are not at their best when they go off half-cocked. She believed that she would prepare… — John Irving Copy Share Image
Listening is crucial for any novelist. Stories & ideas abound. We too often talk about ourselves & block out the richness others may offer. — Mark Rubinstein Copy Share Image
Back in the 1980s, when I was a lowly editorial assistant by day and trying to be a novelist by night, no… — Jean Hanff Korelitz Copy Share Image
“I was secretly entranced with the idea of a lady novelist. I should dearly love to be one. Or maybe a goblin-fighting-pirate-queen.… — Alyxandra Harvey Copy Share Image
A pornographic novelist is one who exploits the sexual instinct as a prostitute does. A legitimate sex novel elucidates it or brings… — George Bernard Shaw Copy Share Image
Among the many problems which beset the novelist, not the least weighty is the choice of the moment at which to begin… — Vita Sackville-West Copy Share Image
“I'm a professional writer and I consider it part of my job to publicise my work and these days part of that… — Sara Sheridan Copy Share Image
A novelist who writes nothing for 10 years finds his reputation rising. Because I keep on producing books they say there must… — J. B. Priestley Copy Share Image
Really, what you should tell a novelist is, 'Keep going until you finish the draft. Don't show it to anyone.' — Andrew Sean Greer Copy Share Image
My whole reputation and creative thought as a novelist is really wrapped around Harry Bosch, so he's near and dear. — Michael Connelly Copy Share Image
Teaching high school was my real training as a novelist: it got me out of my head, and (at least a little)… — Garth Greenwell Copy Share Image
“The novelist is more like a pregnant woman who delivers her own child unaided. A messy procedure, with lots of groaning.” — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
I'm a novelist first, and I wrote a bunch of books, and everything I write, I just find people are more interesting… — Jonathan Tropper Copy Share Image
The novelist wants to know how things will turn out; the historian already knows how things turned out, but wants to know… — Michael Korda Copy Share Image
Reading a novel is just a much more involving and intimate experience than the act of watching a film. I mean, you… — Jay McInerney Copy Share Image
Writing [for the novelist] is not an activity, but a condition. That is why one simply can't resume the work when one… — Robert Musil Copy Share Image
Expansion, that is the idea the novelist must cling to, not completion, not rounding off, but opening out. — Anonymous Copy Share Image
“At the heart of the novelist's craft lies an optimism which thinks that the knowledge we gather from our everyday experience, if… — Orhan Pamuk Copy Share Image
In my view, the novelist has no right to express his opinions on the things of this world. In creating, he must… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
More people thought I was strange because I was a teenage novelist, not because I was from Oklahoma. That's where I got… — S. E. Hinton Copy Share Image
A novelist's sense that he or she is 'above' a certain genre mainly comes out of the notion that the genre is… — Lynn Coady Copy Share Image
The materials of the novelist must be real; they must be gathered from the field of humanity by his actual observation. — Goldwin Smith Copy Share Image
A good novelist loves all of his characters, he lives in them, even in those who commit or must commit terrible acts. — Liao Yiwu Copy Share Image
![“People without hope do not write novels … [Writing fiction] is a plunge into reality and it’s very shocking to the system. If the novelist is not sustained by a hope of money, then he must be sustained by a hope of salvation, or he simply won’t survive the ordeal.” quote by Flannery O'Connor](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/225/flannery-o-connor-639_books_people-without-hope-do-not-write-novels_903687.png)
![“Writing [for the novelist] is not an activity, but a condition. That is why one simply can't resume the work when one has a job and a free half-day. Reading is the conveyance of this condition.” quote by Robert Musil](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/eee/robert-musil-2009_activity_writing-for-the-novelist-is-not-an-activ_754588.jpg)
