Novelist Quotes

365 Novelist quotes by 274 unique authors

There is only one expert who is qualified to examine the souls and the life of a people and make a valuable report - the… — Mark Twain
A novelist is a man who doesn't like his mother. — Georges Simenon
When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even a very… — Virginia Woolf
The historian records, but the novelist creates. — E. M. Forster
It is my contention that a really great novel is made with a knife and not a pen. A novelist must have the intestinal fortitude… — Frank Yerby
The craft of the novelist does lie first of all in story-telling. — Elizabeth Bowen
Every novelist has a different purpose-and often several purposes which might even be contradictory. — Irwin Shaw
The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction. — Oscar Wilde
The novelist must be his own most harsh critic and also his own most loving admirer and about both he must say nothing. — Angus Wilson
A man can write one book that can be great, but this doesn't make him a great writer-just the writer of a great book. .… — Anthony Burgess
Why should a novelist not also be a historian? To force unnatural divisions within the English language is to work against its capacious and accommodating… — Peter Ackroyd
Novelists are perhaps the last people in the world to be entrusted with opinions. The nature of a novel is that it has no opinions,… — Anthony Burgess
With the marketing pressures driving the book world today, it's much easier to get the author of a memoir on a television show than a… — David Halberstam
I don’t think ‘science fiction’ is a very good name for it, but it’s the name that we’ve got. It is different from other kinds… — Ursula K. Le Guin
Let's put it this way: if you are a novelist, I think you start out with a 20 word idea, and you work at it… — Eric Carle
There's a curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists...Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life… — Don DeLillo
Novels are fictions and therefore they tell lies, but through those lies every novelist attempts to tell the truth about the world. — Paul Auster
I would rather win souls than be the greatest king or emperor on earth; I would rather win souls than be the greatest general that… — Reuben Archer Torrey
The biggest downside to being a novelist is writing the novel. — Unknown Author
I am the luckiest novelist in the world. I was a first-time novelist who wasn't awash in rejection slips, whose manuscript didn't disappear in slush… — Vikas Swarup
In a rough way the short story writer is to the novelist as a cabinetmaker is to a house carpenter. — Annie Proulx
Today we can say that at last the director writes the film. The image--its plastic composition and the way it is set in time, because… — Andre Bazin
The difficulty of saying I-a phrase from the East German novelist Christa Wolf. But once having said it, as we realize the necessity to go… — Adrienne Rich
In order for a long piece of work to engage a novelist over an extended period of time, it has to deal with questions that… — Donna Tartt
The job of the novelist is to invent: to embroider, to color, to embellish, to entertain, to make things up. The art of what I… — Donna Tartt

Who Wrote These Novelist Quotes

274 authors contributed a total of 365 Novelist Quotes, led by these top contributors: