Books Quote by Milan Kundera

I always assume that a good book is more intelligent than its author. It can say things that the writer is not aware of.

— Umberto Eco

Everyone assumes that novelists are smarter and more interesting. They're generally smarter and more interesting, but they're often very short. So it kind of…

— Liev Schreiber

A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although... he may be permitted to be an intellectual.

— Anthony Burgess

One thing you learn about the novel as a form is that it's always smarter than you are.

— Zadie Smith

I don't think writers are any smarter than other people. I think they may be more compelling in their stupidity, or in their confusion.

— David Foster Wallace

Novelists are perhaps the last people in the world to be entrusted with opinions. The nature of a novel is that it has no…

— Anthony Burgess

We don't genuinely need more literary geniuses. One can only read so many books in a lifetime.

— Bill James

“[T]he narrative intelligences of our books should leave us feeling a bit pressed intellectually, a bit outmatched, amazed ultimately by the talent of the…

— Bryan Basamanowicz

I am trying to write novels for properly clever people, but I also want them to be proper novels that also stick in a…

— Sophie Hannah

I've learned over the years that the writing is smarter and far larger than the writer and his or her own desires for it.

— Andre Dubus

I really believe that readers are smart and sophisticated enough to realize that the author is not the narrator of his novels.

— Bret Easton Ellis

There are plenty of brilliant people who are too stressed out to read challenging literary novels.

— John Burdett