Books Quote by John Gregory Dunne

An author's characters do what he wants them to do.

— W. E. B. Griffin

Novels function and the power of novels function because of their stories.

— Mohsin Hamid

I've never really understood that whole thing of writers avoiding other writers' novels while they're working on their own.

— Ned Beauman

All readers come to fiction as willing accomplices to your lies. Such is the basic goodwill contract made the moment we pick up a…

— Steve Almond

It’s as much a writer’s concern, who is responsible to his readers for all the books written before him as well as those which…

— Ilya Ehrenburg

I think fiction writers write what they do because no one else has written it and they want to read it.

— Alan Cheuse

Writers sometimes are paid a great deal of money, but much more frequently they're not paid or are paid only a little bit.

— Alice Mattison

I think any writer is a fool if he doesn't do it for money. There needs to be some kind of incentive in addition…

— Elmore Leonard

The writer has to take risks and go somewhere full of mystery and possibility for the novel to deepen over the years it takes…

— Dana Spiotta

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

— Michael Helm

Fiction writers are strange beasts. They are, like all writers, observers first and foremost. Everything that happens to and around them is potential material…

— Terry Brooks

A writer is a performer as well. A writer isn't the literary department. That gets tried on but nothing's a script unless a good…

— William Monahan