The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
I don't know who said that novelists read the novels of others only to figure out how they are written. I believe… — Gabriel Garcia Marquez Copy Share Image
A novelist must preserve a childlike belief in the importance of things which common sense considers of no great consequence. — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
To be honest, I want readers to be wrung out. As a novelist, I don't have a political agenda or specific philosophy;… — Jillian Medoff Copy Share Image
The novel is very much alive, indeed. In Toronto at the Sixth Annual International Festival of Authors (October 1985) I listened to… — William Golding Copy Share Image
Nobody asks you to do this. The world out there is not panting after another novelist. We choose it. — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
The Catholic novelist in the South will see many distorted images of Christ, but he will certainly feel that a distorted image… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Expansion, that is the idea the novelist must cling to, not completion, not rounding off, but opening out. — Anonymous Copy Share Image
It is not the office of a novelist to show us how to behave ourselves; it is not the business of fiction… — Agnes Repplier Copy Share Image
I found it really disturbing to see a novelist writing a diatribe about Islam and Muslim radical extremists, blurring the distinction between… — Pankaj Mishra Copy Share Image
The novelist's ambition is not to do something better than his predecessors but to see what they did not see, say what… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
Just as the painter thinks with his brush and paints the novelist thinks with his story. — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Slowly, after dozens of rejection slips and failures and false starts and postponed dreams - what Langston Hughes called dreams deferred -… — Anne Lamott Copy Share Image
Novels are fictions and therefore they tell lies, but through those lies every novelist attempts to tell the truth about the world. — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
The novelist is more a marathon runner than long-distance runner and the kind of courage it takes working in such isolation cannot… — Tobsha Learner Copy Share Image
I think having a coach or an editor or whatever the novelist's producer is could help. If you finish a chapter and… — Craig Finn Copy Share Image
People have obsessions and fears and passions which they don't admit to. I think every character is interesting and has extremes. It's… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
“They are very large in effect, these painters; very little self-conscious; they have smooth broad spaces in their minds where I am… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
In a certain way, novelists become unacknowledged historians, because we talk about small, tiny, little anonymous moments that won't necessarily make it… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Everything written, if it has anything in it, will offend someone, and if the mere taking of offence was to amount to… — Rex Murphy Copy Share Image
I'm not imprisoned in any one medium. In films I use techniques that are not necessarily what other directors attempt. When I… — Philippe Claudel Copy Share Image
With a novelist's sense of drama and a historian's understanding of the social forces that shape our lives, Tom Gjelten has captured… — Ronald Steel Copy Share Image
