Novelist Quotes

My whole life, I've wanted to be a novelist.

— Jane Fallon

“I love you so much. Our love is eternal.”

— Santonu Kumar Dhar

I'm not really a mainstream novelist!

— Irvine Welsh

The historian records, but the novelist creates.

— Anonymous

I'm not a biographer, I'm a novelist.

— Barry Unsworth

“The novelist's business is lying.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

— H. L. Mencken

“Novelist: Telling lies for fun and profit.”

— Marilyn Celeste Morris

“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

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

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

— Giles Coren

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

— Peter S. Prescott

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

— Jerzy Kosinski

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

— Donna Tartt

If a novelist tells you something she knows or thinks, and you believe her, that is not because either of you think…

— A. S. Byatt

“Rich will be my life if I can keep my memories full and brimming, and record them on clear-eyed mornings while I…

— Roman Payne

I'm probably the only novelist who has ever written about political fugitives who actually knew a lot about them, had contact with…

— Marge Piercy

I am not an academic who happens to have written a novel. I am a novelist who happens to be quite good…

— A. S. Byatt

The Chilean novelist Isabel Allende says there's no such thing as writer's block, you just need to live a bit more. I…

— Maggie O'Farrell

Form is, in a way, death. A novelist's obligation is to break free from the form, even though he knows that this…

— Karl Ove Knausgaard

There was never a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn't be. He is too many people if he's any good.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

I didn't have a dream of being a press secretary, I had a dream of being a playwright; I had a dream…

— Pearl Cleage

We all live on so many different levels and understandably present just a small portion of ourselves in most of our everyday…

— Elizabeth Strout

“I know you would be watching over me all through this journey called life... whenever I look next to me, I feel…

— Santonu Kumar Dhar

Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers…

— Don Delillo

The higher processes are all processes of simplification. The novelist must learn to write, and then he must unlearn it; just as…

— Willa Cather

“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

“Q: What literary complexities do you find most interesting? That is, what do you like most to "solve," so to speak, as…

— Gilbert Sorrentino

“Being a novelist is not the sort of thing we can shut off. It infests every bit of us until we lose…

— Thomm Quackenbush

Like every novelist, I fantasise about film. Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own…

— John le Carre

“The lady who works in the grocery store at the corner of my block is called Denise, and she's one of America's…

— Dave Gibbons

“Novelists when they write novels tend to take an almost godlike attitude toward their subject, pretending to a total comprehension of the…

— Hermann Hesse

The problems you have as a novelist tend to have to do with making a living and trying to find ways to…

— Michael Chabon

“Drama usually bases itself on the bedrock of original sin, whether the writer thinks in theological terms or not. Then, too, any…

— Flannery O'Connor

“The thought of the novelist that matters most is the thought that makes him a novelist. The thought of the novelist lies…

— Philip Roth

“I've written you sixty-seven love poems. Here’s another one for you. But really, for me. These poems are the candles that I…

— Kamand Kojouri

“The taste for books was an early one. As a child he was sometimes found at midnight by a page still reading.…

— Virginia Woolf

“One has to be just a little crazy to write a great novel. One must be capable of allowing the darkest, most…

— john gardner