1975 Quote by Chinua Achebe

The Novelist As Teacher”: “I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones I set in the past) did no more than…

— Chinua Achebe

“There are certain books in the history of the world that should never have been written. This book makes all those look like masterpieces.”

— Jarod Kintz

Novels help us to resist the temptation to think of the past as deficient.

— Ian Mcewan

“(Novels are no use at all on days like these, they deal with people and their relationships, with themselves and others, fathers and mothers…

— Max Frisch

“As long as I can remember I have been carelessly casting myself uninvited into novels where no self-respecting novelist would have me. This literary…

— Guy Vanderhaeghe

“The writing of novels is one of the few ways I have found to approach the altar of God and Creation itself. You try…

— Pat Conroy

“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.”

— René Descartes

“Why this book? In today’s globalized world, it seems we forget things that happened only a decade ago. Thus, we repeat the mistakes of…

— Thomas Jerome Baker

“The history of interpretation, the skills by which we keep alive in our minds the light and dark of past literature and past humanity…

— Frank Kermode

“We all write fiction when we write about the past.”

— Stephen King

“I think long and carefully about what novels ought to do. They should clarify the roles that have become obscured; they ought to identify…

— Toni Morrison

“Without the personal traumas, tribulations and ‘terribles’ that I have experienced throughout life, I wouldn’t have gained the information necessary to write this book…

— Emma James