You need three things to become a successful novelist: talent, luck and discipline. Discipline is the one element of those three things… — Michael Chabon Copy Share Image
They (the novelists) became the voice of the citizen against the ubiquitous raison d'état, which reappeared endlessly to justify everything from unjust… — John Ralston Saul Copy Share Image
“As it is I'm a dated novelist, whom hardly anybody reads, or if they do, most of them don't understand what I… — Patrick White Copy Share Image
When you get inside a literary novel you feel that the author, more often than not, just doesn't know enough about things.… — Peter York Copy Share Image
I'm a novelist, and idle speculation is what novelists do. How odd to spend one's life trying to pretend that non-existent people… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
Let’s hope the institution of marriage survives its detractors, for without it there would be no more adultery and without adultery two… — Peter S. Prescott Copy Share Image
Most contemporary novelists, especially the American and the French, are too subjective, mesmerized by private demons; theyre enraptured by their navels and… — Truman Capote Copy Share Image
Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
A bonus, being a writer, is that the true-life source material is fabulously bizarre. There's so much corruption, violence and free-floating depravity… — Carl Hiaasen Copy Share Image
“Fueled by my inspiration, I ran across the room to steal the cup of coffee the bookshelf had taken prisoner. Lapping the… — Roman Payne Copy Share Image
Like all mystics (and many novelists, not least the present one) he is baffled, a child, before the real now; far happier… — John Fowles Copy Share Image
“I am certain that a novelist is someone who attributes a different reality-value to the characters and events of his story than… — Alain Robbe-Grillet Copy Share Image
Yes, one uses what one knows, but autobiography means something else. I should never be able to write a real autobiography; I… — Alberto Moravia Copy Share Image
Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with… — Louise Erdrich Copy Share Image
So, how to stay inside the world of entertainment without actually getting another job? I felt the only logical answer was to… — Lee Child Copy Share Image
Even when I was living below the poverty line as a novelist, I was still living better than 99.5% of the human… — Jonathan Ames Copy Share Image
The detective story itself is in a dilemma. It is a vein which is in danger of being worked out, the demand… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
I am not a psychological novelist, and I try very hard not to allow the reader to see the plight or circumstances… — Alix Kates Shulman Copy Share Image
In the end, of course, all novelists will be judged by their novels, but let's not forget that we will also need… — Pankaj Mishra Copy Share Image
I think novelists are in the education business, really, but they're not teaching you times tables, they are teaching you responsiveness and… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
John Lane has long been recognized as one of the South's finest poets and memoirists. This debut establishes him as one of… — Ron Rash Copy Share Image
I take a real interest in the possibilities of teaching - including the practice of bringing creative writing, and serious reading, into… — Michael Cadnum Copy Share Image
Novelists in particular love to rhapsodize about the glory of the solitary mind; this is natural, because their job requires them to… — Clive Thompson Copy Share Image
When I'm writing a novel, I'm dealing with a double life. I live in the present at the same time that I… — Anonymous Copy Share Image
Did the nineteenth-century novelists create more generously than we do now? In a general reading of contemporary work, do you see a… — Lore Segal Copy Share Image
Since I'm a novelist I'm the opposite of you - I believe that what's most important is what cannot be measured. I'm… — Haruki Murakami Copy Share Image
The novelist's--any writer's--object is to whittle down his meaning to the exactest and finest possible point. What, of course, isfatal is when… — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
Like most novelists, I like to do exactly the opposite of what I'm told. It's in my nature as a novelist. Novelists… — Haruki Murakami Copy Share Image
Today we can say that at last the director writes the film. The image--its plastic composition and the way it is set… — Andre Bazin Copy Share Image
Naturally a direct comparison of terrorist and novelist is complete nonsense. But there was once a time when the novelist also had… — Don DeLillo Copy Share Image
The better you know someone, the less well you often see them (and the less well they can therefore be transferred into… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“What a gift. This page is briefly stained by my tears of gratitude. Novelists don't usually have it so good, do they,… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
The advantage, the luxury, as well as the torment and responsibility of the novelist, is that there is no limit to what… — Henry James Copy Share Image
A woman journalist in England asked me why Americans usually wrote about their childhood and a past that happened only in imagination,… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
In the 1930s, all the novelists had seemed to be people who came blazing up into stardom from out of total obscurity.… — Tom Wolfe Copy Share Image
I think what saved me, as a writer, is that there are really two breaking points in my life. One was when… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
The utmost the American novelist can hope for, if he hopes at all to see his work included in the literature of… — Mary Hunter Austin Copy Share Image
Society is the stage on which manners are shown; novels are the literature. Novels are the journal or record of manners; and… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The best moments involve a loss of control. It's a kind of rapture, and it can happen with words and phrases fairly… — Don DeLillo Copy Share Image
I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't and then tries the short story which… — William Faulkner Copy Share Image
