Novelists Quotes

478 Novelists quotes by 343 unique authors

What description of clouds and sunsets was to the old novelist, description of scientific apparatus and methods is to the modern Scientific Detective writer. — Hugo Gernsback
It's almost a sort of fairy story tale, just what a novelist would write about a discovery. — Charles Hard Townes
Neanderthal man listened to stories, if one may judge by the shape of his skull. The primitive audience was an audience of shock-heads, gaping around… — E. M. Forster
If you are a novelist of a certain type of termperament, then what you really want to do is re-invent the world. God wasn't too… — John Barth
Talents of the novelist: ... observation of character, analysis of emotion, people's feelings, personal relations ... — Virginia Woolf
The complete novelist would come into the world with a catalog of qualities like this. He would own the concentration of a Trappist monk, the… — Leon Uris
A novelist can shift view-point if it comes off. ... Indeed, this power to expand and contract perception (of which the shifting view-point is a… — E. M. Forster
The art of fiction does not begin until the novelist thinks of his story as a matter to be shown, to be so exhibited that… — Percy Lubbock
The object of the novelist is to keep the reader entirely oblivious of the fact that the author exists - even of the fact he… — Ford Madox Ford
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
The makers of the short story have rarely been good novelists. — V. S. Pritchett
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
Reading is the most rewarding form of exile and the most necessary discipline for novelists who burn with the ambition to get better. — Pat Conroy
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
Like all mystics (and many novelists, not least the present one) he is baffled, a child, before the real now; far happier out of it,… — John Fowles
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
Through books you will meet poets and novelists whose creations will fire your imagination. You will meet the great thinkers who will share with you… — Neil Armstrong

Who Wrote These Novelists Quotes

343 authors contributed a total of 478 Novelists Quotes, led by these top contributors: