Accusation Quote by Henry James

The first obligation of the writer is to be interesting. To be interesting; not to change the world.

— John Barth

My experience is that an original and compelling idea for a novel is a rare thing.

— James Thayer

For me, a novel relying too heavily on a single idea might be a dry, deadly thing unless it possesses an animating force.

— Meg Wolitzer

“Why do you think I'm reading this? But you know—though maybe you have different standards for what constitutes 'interesting' than I do—there's no such…

— Natsuhiko Kyogoku

The one thing which seems to me quite impossible is to take into consideration the kind of book one is expected to write; surely…

— Dorothy L. Sayers

To make it interesting and worth doing, writing a novel has to be a leap into the unknown. I have to be unsure if…

— Charles Palliser

Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles.

— Annie Dillard

I really feel the novel has certain conveniences about it and has something so fundamental about it you could almost say that as long…

— William Golding

Novels seem to exist because of this need to know and connect, and so story becomes charged with necessity.

— Michael Helm

... the main concern of the fiction writer is with mystery as it is incarnated in human life.

— Flannery O'Connor

I write the novels that are possible for me to write, not that ones I think will come across in a certain light.

— Rachel Kushner

My imagination doesn't require anything more of the book than to provide a framework within which it can wander.

— Alphonse Daudet