Novelist Quotes

365 Novelist quotes by 274 unique authors

A novelist has to know enough about a subject to fool the passenger next to him on an airplane. — David Foster Wallace
The illusion of the seventh veil was the illusion that you could get somebody else to do it for you. To think for you. To… — Tom Robbins
A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished.… — Jonathan Carroll
A novelist has two lives-- a reading and writing life, and a lived life. he or she cannot be understood at all apart from this. — Jane Smiley
One thing I knew about the novelist’s task: when in doubt, write; when empty, write; when afraid, write. Nothing is more impenetrable than the blank… — Philip Sington
How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another's heart? How much can we hope to understand those who have suffered… — Orhan Pamuk
The novelist must look on humanity without partiality or prejudice. His sympathy, like that of the historian, must be unbounded, and untainted by sect or… — Goldwin Smith
Expansion, that is the idea the novelist must cling to, not completion, not rounding off, but opening out. — E. M. Forster
In high school, I wanted to be an actress. Until I got to college and took some creative writing courses. Then I decided I wanted… — Meg Cabot
I have an English literature degree. I wanted to be the next great American novelist from a very early age, but I put it aside… — Daniel Suarez
A novelist writes a novel, and people read it. But reading is a solitary act. While it may elicit a varied and personal response, the… — August Wilson
The novelist wants to know how things will turn out; the historian already knows how things turned out, but wants to know why they turned… — Michael Korda
My first attraction to writing novels was the plot, that almost extinct animal. Those novels I read which made me want to be a novelist… — John Irving
My father was a screenwriter, but he was also a novelist. — Sadie Jones
I was always at heart a novelist and wanted to tell a bigger story, so I wanted to create people who told other kinds of… — Aminatta Forna
The only way to be a novelist, to think that you can create something others will give themselves up to for a dozen hours or… — Nicola Griffith
As an historical novelist - there are few jobs more retrospective. I dumped science at an early age. — Sara Sheridan
A house with any kind of age will have dozens of stories to tell. I suppose if a novelist could live long enough, one could… — Anita Shreve
The pull of history has been a strong theme in my life as a novelist. — Anita Shreve
As a novelist, I remain interested in the notion of a single reckless act and its consequences. — Anita Shreve
I am not expecting anyone to feel sorry for me, but when friends ask how it feels to be a debut novelist who has also… — Rachel Joyce
You perhaps know me as a novelist. Literature is one of the arts - in fact, the noblest of the arts. That is not my… — F. Sionil Jose
Pundits always have something to write about; the novelist just has a blank screen. — Simon Mawer
Back in the 1980s, when I was a lowly editorial assistant by day and trying to be a novelist by night, no god reigned so… — Jean Hanff Korelitz
Playing with different genres and perspectives and ways of telling stories is one of the perks of being a novelist, but at the same time,… — Linn Ullmann

Who Wrote These Novelist Quotes

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