Novelist Quotes · Page 5

And then, as if written by the hand of a bad novelist, an incredible thing happened.

— Jonathan Stroud

The function of the novelist... is to comment upon life as he sees it.

— Frank Norris

I wrote a novel, so now they can call me a novelist. I tell stories; that's it.

— Nathan Englander

I am a fictionalizing philosopher, not a novelist.

— Philip K. Dick

I am happy that I'm a better novelist than a screenwriter.

— Graeme Simsion

Well I'm not a novelist. I've only written one book and that is a memoir.

— Carly Fiorina

“I'm a novelist by trade and my job is to write a story rather than reconstruct actual events.”

— Sara Sheridan

“I'm not stupid, romantic, or a busy Russian novelist.”

— Rabih Alameddine

I love novels, but I'm not a novelist. I'm just a dramatist, which means I write lines for actors. That's all I…

— John Logan

Reading a newspaper is like reading someone's letters, as opposed to a biography or a history. The writer really does not know…

— A. S. Byatt

“Why are you behaving like this? You know how much I love you … and I believe you love me as much,…

— santonu Kumar Dhar

The object of the novelist is to keep the reader entirely oblivious of the fact that the author exists - even of…

— Ford Madox Ford

I have that special sort of novelist body of knowledge which is extraordinarily wide and very, very shallow. So I can usually…

— Christopher Moore

In high school, I wanted to be an actress. Until I got to college and took some creative writing courses. Then I…

— Meg Cabot

I think, if you want to grow a novelist, for that person to have a lot of boring time trying to entertain…

— Ann Patchett

I love the novelist's freedom of going into different people's subjectivity and being able to work with them as characters.

— Elif Batuman

“A warm sunny evening, the plash and gurgle of the waves in the rock pools, the rush of the cold gin. I…

— William Boyd

For the first-time novelist you've got to get up at 5:30 in the morning and write until 7, make breakfast and go…

— Ridley Pearson

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

“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

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

As a poet or a novelist or a painter, you are pushing yourself all the time, always looking for a new way…

— Paul Auster

Well, to be honest I think I'm a better short story writer than a novelist. Novels I find very hard, hours and…

— Eric Brown

“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

“Now that I was a novelist, I could not face the ignominy of failing to produce novels.”

— Thomas Keneally

... the novelist is bound by the reasonable possibilities, not the probabilities, of his culture.

— Flannery O'Connor

As an historical novelist – there are few jobs more retrospective.

— Sara Sheridan

I'm a novelist at heart. How's that? And that's how I make my living, is I write novels.

— Nicholas Sparks

Being a novelist is hard for anyone - male or female. You don't get to quit your day job.

— Jennifer Weiner

I believe that only poetry counts ... A great novelist is first of all a great poet.

— Francois Mauriac

“Life is full of beautiful moments. Live your life to the fullest. And do what you love.”

— Santonu Kumar Dhar

“Every book has to wait for the right time to be read and understood.”

— Kamand Kojouri

Being a novelist, you can roam around with a story and indulge yourself.

— Gillian Flynn

I don't really consider myself a novelist, it just came out purely by accident.

— Wole Soyinka

A novelist has to know enough about a subject to fool the passenger next to him on an airplane.

— David Foster Wallace

“I guess it’s true: it’s difficult for men to understand women.”

— Santonu Kumar Dhar

A Christian novelist tries to describe the world as it is.

— John Updike

Pundits always have something to write about; the novelist just has a blank screen.

— Simon Mawer

As a novelist, I remain interested in the notion of a single reckless act and its consequences.

— Anita Shreve

“I spend a lot of time imagining things - in fact, you could say that imagining things is my job.”

— Sara Sheridan