Quote by Josh Kaufman

“My knowledge of Mr. Forster’s works is limited to one novel which I dislike; and anyway it was not he who fathered that trite…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“Good fiction can help us to expand our circle of empathy to include people unlike ourselves.- R' Eitan Levy”

— Eitan Levy

“Pamela’s prescription was simple: give the summer mornings to Cliff End, then, in September, go full blast at the book. Specious, but I knew…

— Dorothy Macardle

“Forget all those prescriptive ideas about "the novel" and "literature" and set down your feelings and thoughts as they come to you, freely, in…

— Haruki Murakami

An author who sets his reader on sounding the depths of his own thoughts serves him best.

— Amos Bronson Alcott

“Individuals who frequently read fiction seem to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and see the world from their perspective.”

— Annie Murphy Paul

The trouble began with Forster. After him it was considered ungentlemanly to write more than five or six novels.

— Anthony Burgess

The novelist is the person who spends a lot of his or her day thinking about the human drama and emotional complexity.

— Thane Rosenbaum

“I read novels to indulge in a concentrated and directed inner activity that parallels -- and thereby tunes up, accentuates -- my own inner…

— Sven Birkerts

The novelist ... must live in paranoia and seek to be one with the world; he must be terrified of experience and hungry for…

— Norman Mailer

“Here follows the substance of what I said, written out entirely for your benefit. Pay attention to it, or you will be all abroad,…

— Wilkie Collins

“Also, I've spent an entire week without reading any books or talking about them too loudly. I'm learning to work my apparat's screen, the…

— Gary Shteyngart