Books Quote by Nicholas Murray

“Good characters in fiction are the very devil. Not only because most authors have too little material to make them of, but because we…

— C.S. Lewis

“Eventually, we come to love certain novels because we have expended so much imaginative labor on them. This is why we hang on to…

— Orhan Pamuk

A great novelist must open the reader's heart, allow the reader to remember the vastness and glory -- and shame and shabbiness -- of…

— Carolyn See

That instinct for human character that is perhaps inherent in an imaginative writer.

— Graham Greene

“The bond between book reader and book writer has always been a tightly symbiotic one, a means of intellectual and artistic cross-fertilization. The words…

— Nicholas Carr

Authors are far closer to the truths enfolded in mystery than ordinary people, because of that very audacity of imagination which irritates their plodding…

— Gertrude Atherton

To read a novel is a difficult and complex art. You must be capable not only of great fineness of perception, but of great…

— Virginia Woolf

Many novelists take well-defined, precise characters, whose stories are sometimes of mediocre interest, and place them in an important historical context, which remains secondary…

— Raymond Queneau

“To write an excellent novel, make the outcome of the story matter to the reader through the evolving relationships between well-designed characters.”

— Martin Sandforth

“Good writers are like magpies, attracted to shiny things and storing away treasures - pieces of dialogue and experience - which pop up from…

— Jane Wilson-Howarth

“Though books were potentially harmful, novels were all the more dangerous. The path of fiction could easily mislead you into the cosmos of stories…

— Elif Shafak

“I began to write fiction on the assumption that the true enemies of the novel were plot, character, setting and theme, and having once…

— John Hawkes