Diane Johnson Quotes

12 quotes in 163 categories

• But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be aware…
• In what we think of as bad dialogue, the characters talk directly to each other.
• The whole process of writing a novel is having this great, beautiful idea and then spoiling it.
• Not having to own a car has made me realize what a waste of time the automobile is.
• Women have the feeling that since they didn't make the rules, the rules have nothing to do with them.
• Laughter is the jam on the toast of life. It adds flavor, keeps it from being too dry, and makes it easier to swallow.
• The Novelist, afraid his ideas may be foolish, slyly puts them in the mouth of some other fool and reserves the right to disavow them.
• Statuettes of drunken sailors, velvet pictures of island maidens, plastic seashell lamps made in Taiwan. What contempt the people who think up souvenirs have for…
• Glenda Adams has written a wicked and witty novel.
• A chaplain's biggest gift is to be present and just listen.
• But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be aware…
• A novel's whole pattern is rarely apparent at the outset of writing, or even at the end; that is when the writer finds out what…

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