Novelists Quotes · Page 8

Before I became a suspense novelist, I wrote romantic suspense as Alicia Scott.

— Lisa Gardner

I guess I've always been an aspiring novelist. I went to Princeton and wrote a novel for my thesis.

— Howard Gordon

A pipe gives a wise man time to think and a fool something to stick in his mouth.

— C. S. Lewis

A novelist is a person who lives in other people's skins.

— Anonymous

All life is a purposeful struggle, and your only choice is the choice of a goal.

— Ayn Rand

To ask a novelist to talk about his novels is like asking somebody to cook about their dancing.

— Jim Crace

I started writing short fiction very briefly, as I imagine is the case for some novelists.

— William Gibson

The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets.

— Christopher Morley

I've been many kinds of writers in my career: novelist; tele-playwright; short story writer. As a high-school student, I wrote amateur pieces…

— George R. R. Martin

I think novelists perform many useful tasks for their fellow citizens, but one of the most valuable is this: to enable us…

— Doris Lessing

Sometimes fear grips me that these fragile moments of life will fade away. It seems that I write against erasure.

— Assia Djebar

Maybe with "Californication" the character was partly based on Rick Moody. I read him and Jay McInerney, the templates for this bad…

— David Duchovny

Novelists should be free to write whatever they want, to let their imaginations roam as close to or as removed from reality…

— Sarah Weinman

Even the best novelists are rarely congratulated on the quality of their observations about contemporary life.

— Michelle Dean

I've always liked the idea that writing is a form of travel. And I started my writing career as a mystery novelist…

— Rick Riordan

Age could not wither nor custom stale her infinite monotony: in fact, neither Age nor Custom could do anything (as they said,…

— Randall Jarrell

In journalism just one fact that is false prejudices the entire work. In contrast, in fiction one single fact that is true…

— Gabriel Garcia Marquez

If you want to understand human beings, there are plenty of people to go to besides psychologists… Most of these people are…

— Anthony Standen

When it [truth] emerges it often bears out the saying that 'truth is stranger than fiction.' A novelist has to appear plausible,…

— Bill Vaughan

There are so many other people involved in the making of a play or a television series or whatever... even if you're…

— Peter Morgan

I'm a very good storyteller; I have a lot of compassion for people. That's very useful for a novelist. A lot of…

— James Patterson

I think it's especially important for an editor to say what he's enjoying. For a novelist to be told, midstream, what he's…

— Donna Tartt

I know that books I have written will still resonate in 50 years - particularly 'My Sister's Keeper.' It has sold three…

— Jodi Picoult

As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday's…

— Haruki Murakami

The problem of the novelist who wishes to write about a man's encounter with God is how he shall make the experience--which…

— Flannery O'Connor

I must say a few words about memory. It is full of holes. If you were to lay it out upon a…

— David Ebershoff

I don't want to name names because they'd be mad at me if I did, but people who are significant novelists can't…

— Tony Kushner

Sappho is a great poet because she is a lesbian, which gives her erotic access to the Muse. Sappho and the homosexual-tending…

— Camille Paglia

Directors who have inspired me include Billy Wilder, Federico Fellini, lngmar Bergman, John Ford, Orson Welles, Werner Herzog, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock,…

— David Lynch

Love. Children are loving, they dont gossip, they dont complain, theyre just open-hearted. Theyre ready for you. They dont judge. They dont…

— Michael Jackson

By the respectable terms of the modern literary profession, novelists do not preach. And, in fact, there has probably not been a…

— Claudia Roth Pierpont

“They know a million tricks, those novelists. Take Doctor Goebbels; that's how he started out, writing fiction. Appeals to the base lusts…

— Philip K. Dick

All novelists should live in two different worlds: a real one and an unreal one.

— John Fowles

In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

— Albert Camus

I have been born more times than anybody except Krishna.

— Mark Twain

That's what books are for... to travel without moving an inch.

— Jhumpa Lahiri

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

— Edmond de Goncourt

We are mere journeymen, planting seeds for someone else to harvest.

— Wallace Thurman

I'm a novelist. Fortunately I don't have to rule the world.

— Salman Rushdie

I do think there's some aspect of being a novelist that is a little crazy making.

— Anna Quindlen