Any Quote by Andrew O'Hagan

I think a novelist must be more tender with living or 'real' people. The moral imperative of having been entrusted with their story looms…

— Rick Bass

How can we expect novelists to be moral, when their trade forces them to treat every end they meet as no more than an…

— Randall Jarrell

Few of us write great novels; all of us live them.

— Mignon McLaughlin

Many writers lay very great stress upon some definite moral purpose, at which they profess to aim their works.

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.

— John Fowles

Writing a novel is one of those modern rites of passage, I think, that lead us from an innocent world of contentment, drunkenness, and…

— J. G. Ballard

Thank God for novelists. Thank God there are people willing to write everything down. Otherwise, so much would be forgotten.

— Kurt Vonnegut

There is little pride in writers. They know they are human and shall some day die and be forgotten. Knowing all this a writer…

— William Saroyan

In terms of writing, I think what most fiction writers treasure more than anything is the feeling that they're living for the length of…

— Lauren Groff

Novelists should be free to write whatever they want, to let their imaginations roam as close to or as removed from reality as they…

— Sarah Weinman

Writers are the moral purifiers of the culture. We may not be pure ourselves but we must tell the truth, which is a purifying…

— Rita Mae Brown

“Writing novels allows the novelist to spend much of his time in a fictional world, which is really the only or at least the…

— Javier Marías