Historians tell the story of the past, novelists the story of the present. — Edmond de Goncourt Copy Share Image
The real novelist, the perfectly simple human being, could go on, indefinitely imaging. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“She'll be an excellent novelist: a monster of self-absorption.” — Lan Samantha Chang Copy Share Image
For a novelist, the gaps in a story are as intriguing as material that still exists. — Sara Sheridan Copy Share Image
I'm a novelist, so I can't write about ideas unless they're attached to people. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
I try very hard to be fair, and I look for ironies. In a way, I live on ironies as a novelist. — Robert Stone Copy Share Image
The best novelist of my generation is an Italian living in Paris, still working and improving - Italo Calvino. — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
The essayist has to follow a certain intellectual pattern. The novelist has the advantage of using fantasy, of being subjective. — Manuel Puig Copy Share Image
There is something so deeply visceral about libraries for me-rooms and rooms full of people dreaming and remembering. — Jacqueline Woodson Copy Share Image
I've always liked the idea that writing is a form of travel. And I started my writing career as a mystery novelist… — Rick Riordan Copy Share Image
I'd defend the right for any novelist to experiment with form or language, but if people don't take to it, don't react… — Graham Joyce Copy Share Image
Age could not wither nor custom stale her infinite monotony: in fact, neither Age nor Custom could do anything (as they said,… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
I wanted nothing less than to be a fiction writer when I was a kid. If you had told me I would… — Caleb Carr Copy Share Image
I think novelists should be disciplined and self-imposed working hours. I work a lot, but I don't feel that I'm working. I… — Orhan Pamuk Copy Share Image
Many novelists take well-defined, precise characters, whose stories are sometimes of mediocre interest, and place them in an important historical context, which… — Raymond Queneau Copy Share Image
I tried to make guitars that were close to what my heroes played. That's the way it's done. My experience is that… — Paul Reed Smith Copy Share Image
I hate this word 'graphic novel.' It is a term publishing houses have created for the bourgeois so they wouldn't be ashamed… — Marjane Satrapi Copy Share Image
And when I'd be reporting in Israel, Palestinians would say, the Jews they're not like us, and the Jews would say the… — Geraldine Brooks Copy Share Image
I follow the way people change. I follow the way people, who are very antagonized to one another become very close to… — Amos Oz Copy Share Image
Novelists get to say plenty in their massive tomes; rock singers only get four-minute songs with two verses and a chorus' worth… — Karan Mahajan Copy Share Image
Writing for the theatre is so different to writing for anything else. Because what you write is eventually going to be spoken.… — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
Being a novelist and being a mother have exactly coincided in my life: the call from my agent saying that I had… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
One realizes that human relationships are the tragic necessity of human life; that they can never be wholly satisfactory, that every ego… — Willa Cather Copy Share Image
By the respectable terms of the modern literary profession, novelists do not preach. And, in fact, there has probably not been a… — Claudia Roth Pierpont Copy Share Image
“They know a million tricks, those novelists. Take Doctor Goebbels; that's how he started out, writing fiction. Appeals to the base lusts… — Philip K. Dick Copy Share Image
Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive… Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Neanderthal man listened to stories, if one may judge by the shape of his skull. The primitive audience was an audience of… — E. M. Forster Copy Share Image
The lucidity of the battle narratives, the vigor of the prose, the strong feeling for the men from generals to privates who… — Walter Millis Copy Share Image
Screenwriting is a terrible way to make a living and I always try to talk anyone out of it. Until you sit… — Amy Holden Jones Copy Share Image
Novels are political not because writers carry party cards -- some do, I do not -- but because good fiction is about… — Orhan Pamuk Copy Share Image
Human nature provides the lyrics, and we novelists just compose the music. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon Copy Share Image
A woman filled with faith in the one she loves is the creation of a novelist's imagination. — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
That is the dream of all novelists-that one of their characters will become 'somebody.' — Jose Saramago Copy Share Image
Today there are a lot of novelists who seem to be writing to be reviewed, not read. — Pete Hamill Copy Share Image
Some novelists want to give people in history a voice because they have been denied it in the past. — Antony Beevor Copy Share Image
Novelist-Citizen of Two Countries Interpreter of his Generation on both Sides of the Sea. — Henry James Copy Share Image
