Bad Quote by Christopher Koch

“Good characters in fiction are the very devil. Not only because most authors have too little material to make them of, but because we…

— C.S. Lewis

The great thing about novels is that you can be as unshy as you want to be. I'm very polite in person. I don't…

— Nicholson Baker

Poorly written novels--no matter how pious and edifying the behavior of the characters--are not good in themselves and are therefore not really edifying.

— Flannery O'Connor

“Good writers may “tell” about almost anything in fiction except the characters’ feelings.”

— John Gardner

It's with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.

— Aldous Huxley

The idea that people in novels should be more sympathetic than people in life simply baffles me.

— Andrew O'Hagan

I don't like characters who are either good or bad. I just don't experience that in life, so my writing hasn't evolved that way.

— Marti Noxon

I think novels just really show us the deepest parts of people's hearts, and you cannot walk away anymore and say, "I don't know."

— Edwidge Danticat

I am a novelist. I traffic in subtleties, and my goal in writing a novel is to leave the reader not knowing what to…

— Teju Cole

It's experiences in life that give us something to write about, and since good fiction is applied tension, you'll have an arsenal of good…

— Wendelin Van Draanen

Good novels are not written, they are rewritten. Great novels are diamonds mined from layered rewrites.

— Piers Paul Read

“A good fiction writer can write any character or any story that she wants to write. The importance, IMO, is a burning desire to…

— Suzanne Brockmann