Novelists Quotes · Page 12

I'm a very old-fashioned novelist. I write 19th-century novels, where a lot of rules apply.

— John Irving

I'm not a novelist, I'm a storyteller. There is no art in what I do, no mystique.

— Alistair Maclean

To fear to face an issue is to believe that the worst is true.

— Ayn Rand

Novelists are too often assumed to write veiled autobiography.

— Lionel Shriver

I started writing short fiction very briefly, as I imagine is the case for some novelists.

— William Gibson

The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets.

— Christopher Morley

All novelists should live in two different worlds: a real one and an unreal one.

— John Fowles

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

— Albert Camus

Universities are filled with poets and novelists conducting demure and careful lives in imitation of Eliot and Forster and those others who…

— Gore Vidal

I think novelists perform many useful tasks for their fellow citizens, but one of the most valuable is this: to enable us…

— Doris Lessing

I've been many kinds of writers in my career: novelist; tele-playwright; short story writer. As a high-school student, I wrote amateur pieces…

— George R. R. Martin

I grew up as a reader as well as a movie-lover, so many of the novelists I admired - and so many…

— Curtis Hanson

Sometimes fear grips me that these fragile moments of life will fade away. It seems that I write against erasure.

— Assia Djebar

The thing I love about Dickens is the omniscient, omnipotent narrator, and the great confidence of the narrator, which marks 19th-century novelists…

— Elizabeth Gilbert

The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the…

— Oscar Wilde

I can't promise that every child with learning differences will become a novelist, but I do think all children can become lifelong…

— Rick Riordan

And there are two types of stories. One type is one's own story. The other type is telling the stories of others.…

— Lee Gutkind

Farber had a huge effect on me as a writer. I don't mean I write like him. Farber is, first of all,…

— Greil Marcus

For me, film has been good because I'm able to work at top crack, working at something I love to do, in…

— William Monahan

One decision I made in writing 'Henry and Clara' was that I would keep Lincoln's appearances and any dialogue by him to…

— Thomas Mallon

The right to life means that a man has the right to support his life by his own work (on any economic…

— Ayn Rand

A rational mind does not work under compulsion; it does not subordinate its grasp of reality to anyone's orders, directives, or controls;…

— Ayn Rand

When young people say I want to be a novelist, I'd say, think very carefully about it. There will be very few…

— Paul Auster

I certainly wake up every morning and thank God that I'm not a novelist because the theater is tough, but novel writing…

— Tony Kushner

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

Directors who have inspired me include Billy Wilder, Federico Fellini, lngmar Bergman, John Ford, Orson Welles, Werner Herzog, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock,…

— David Lynch

Love. Children are loving, they dont gossip, they dont complain, theyre just open-hearted. Theyre ready for you. They dont judge. They dont…

— Michael Jackson

If human nature does alter it will be because individuals manage to look at themselves in a new way. Here and there…

— E. M. Forster

The problem of the novelist who wishes to write about a man's encounter with God is how he shall make the experience--which…

— Flannery O'Connor

I don't want to name names because they'd be mad at me if I did, but people who are significant novelists can't…

— Tony Kushner

I must say a few words about memory. It is full of holes. If you were to lay it out upon a…

— David Ebershoff

“It would have been possible to back out of his engagements by assuming the license of the free artistic spirit, but he…

— Ian McEwan

I have been born more times than anybody except Krishna.

— Mark Twain

To ask a novelist to talk about his novels is like asking somebody to cook about their dancing.

— Jim Crace

We are mere journeymen, planting seeds for someone else to harvest.

— Wallace Thurman

I do think there's some aspect of being a novelist that is a little crazy making.

— Anna Quindlen

I'm a novelist. Fortunately I don't have to rule the world.

— Salman Rushdie

The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don't consider myself a novelist.

— Wole Soyinka

I think, in common with a lot of novelists, I wasn't the most athletic guy at school.

— Chris Cleave

That's what books are for... to travel without moving an inch.

— Jhumpa Lahiri