Books Quote by Flannery O'Connor

The novelist helps us to see things we might not notice otherwise.

— Madeleine L'Engle

“Novels should reflect reality to some extent, otherwise they risk being sentimental.”

— Marc Levy

“Unable to explore setting, conflict, characters or themes in their fiction, the mainstreamers wrote more and more eloquently about nothing at all.”

— Dave Wolverton

“The novelist might be greater possible help to us if they painted life as it is, and human feelings in their true proportion and…

— William Dean Howells

“This means the literary effect is not the main concern here; the author is more concerned with plot. And that plot must be relatively…

— Stella Gibbons

The things that the novel does not say are necessarily more numerous than those it does say and only a special halo around what…

— Italo Calvino

“This writing doesn't affect reality any more than any writing does; that is to say, indirectly, but considerably.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin

You see, the contemporary writer must write through his intimations of unease, while trying to elucidate them.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

“he was sure that she, with a little more time and a little more wisdom, would come to accept that the novels he liked…

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Few authors understand themselves, and a proper reader must not only understand his author but also be able to see beyond him

— Johann Georg Hamann

He who would reproach an author for obscurity should look into his own mind to see whether it is quite clear there. In the…

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“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