What's not realized about good novelists is that they're as competitive as good athletes. They study each other - where the other… — Norman Mailer Copy Share Image
History is the history of human behavior, and human behavior is the raw material of fiction. Most people recognize that novelists do… — Amy Waldman Copy Share Image
The business of a novelist is, in my opinion, to create characters first and foremost, and then to set them in the… — John Dos Passos Copy Share Image
But in this country we have one great privilege which they don't have in other countries. When a thing gets to be… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
Bitter criticism caused the sensitive Thomas Hardy, one of the finest novelists ever to enrich English literature, to give up forever the… — Dale Carnegie Copy Share Image
Which is mightily ironic since one of the most common criticisms of American women novelists (it's a load of crap but it… — Lidia Yuknavitch Copy Share Image
The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false… — Isaac Asimov Copy Share Image
Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I think it's the source material. 27 Dresses was a famous book, and Devil Wears Prada was also a wonderful book, so… — Jerry Bruckheimer Copy Share Image
I was once doing a question and answer period with the novelist Jane Smiley in a bookstore and someone asked us what… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
There are a lot of historical novelists who do the research about the clothes and maybe even the eating utensils, but they're… — Edmund White Copy Share Image
Readers no longer need novelists to tell us what it's like to cross the world on a ship or fight a war.… — Walter Mosley Copy Share Image
Mark Twain was a great traveler and he wrote three or four great travel books. I wouldn't say that I'm a travel… — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
A true nature is a gloomy monolith, sort of like that old black rotary phone that I had to sing 'Happy Birthday'… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
Good girls like myself need subversion. Being solemn, I aspire to comedy. Being a novelist, I aspire to the musical. Being organized,… — Janet Burroway Copy Share Image
There were several points where I would kind of turn to the book and say, "Get thee behind me." I don't think… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I sometimes feel that my goal as a novelist would be to write a novel in which the language was so transparent… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
Would-be novelists need to bring equal parts arrogance and ignorance to the task before them. The arrogance is almost self-explanatory. Walk into… — Laura Lippman Copy Share Image
There is only one expert who is qualified to examine the souls and the life of a people and make a valuable… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
I put it to you that there are no British poets, there are no British novelists. I have heard myself described as… — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
Without a doubt, I was born to want to make cinema, but the kind of cinema I want to make is not… — Francis Ford Coppola Copy Share Image
But I have seen my obstacles: trivialities, learning and poetry. This last needs explaining: the old artist's readiness to dissolve characters into… — E. M. Forster Copy Share Image
If you're a novelist, you have sort of themes that run throughout novels. You start a novel and you finish a novel.… — Amos Lee Copy Share Image
There is an enormous pressure placed on gay novelists because they are the only spokespeople. The novelist's first obligation is to be… — Edmund White Copy Share Image
Snowden is almost preternaturally prepossessing and self-possessed. I think of a novelist whose dream character just walks into his or her head.… — Laura Poitras Copy Share Image
If the rewards to authors go down, simple economics says there will be fewer authors. It's not that people won't burn with… — Scott Turow 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
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
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
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
A few of the world's most famous non-American novelists have large followings in the United States, among them Gabriel Garcia Marquez and… — Stephen Kinzer 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
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
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
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
