Great novelists are philosopher novelists - that is, the…

“The great novelists are philosophical novelists--that is, the contrary of thesis-writers.”

— Albert Camus

“Our great novelists, though experts on indignity and assault, on loneliness and terror, tend to avoid treating the passionate encounter of a man and…

— Leslie Fiedler

“I don’t know about lying for novelists. I look at some of the great novelists, and I think the reason they are great is…

— Maya Angelou

I look at some of the great novelists, and I think the reason they are great is that they're telling the truth. The fact…

— Maya Angelou

“From the beginning I've searched out those writers unafraid to stir up the emotions, who entrust me with their darkest passions, their most indestructible…

— Pat Conroy

I believe that all novels, ... deal with character, and that it is to express character – not to preach doctrines, sing songs, or…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

If you need proof of how the oral relates to the written, consider that many great novelists, including Joyce and Hemingway, never submitted a…

— Frank Delaney

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

— Albert Camus

All the reasons which made the initiation of physical force evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.

— Ayn Rand

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

— Martin Amis

The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that…

— Isaac Asimov

Things that appear on the front page of the newspaper as 'fact' are far more dangerous than the games played by a novelist, and…

— E. L. Doctorow

I always counsel aspiring novelists that passion is the most important quality for a writer to possess - technique can be taught, but that…

— Lisa Kleypas

Not everyone is capable of madness; and of those lucky enough to be capable, not many have the courage for it.

— August Strindberg

“She'll be an excellent novelist: a monster of self-absorption.”

— Lan Samantha Chang