Books Quote by Steven Saylor

“A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees…

— Azar Nafisi

There is nothing more dreadful to an author than neglect; compared with which reproach, hatred, and opposition are names of happiness; yet this worst,…

— Samuel Johnson

I think that one of the compelling themes of fiction is this confrontation between good and evil.

— William Styron

Good novel are written by people who are not frightened.

— George Orwell

Novelists who treat violence and cruelty as something to be exploited for their effect, or to enjoy the pleasure of an evacuation, are carriers…

— Storm Jameson

“The best books — like the best music or television or movies or comics or video games — can challenge us and force us…

— Geoffrey Reiter

“One intriguing way to enter into the battle between good and evil, life and death, sanity and madness, is in the pages of fiction.”

— Robert Poe

When literature becomes deliberately indifferent to the opposition of good and evil it betrays its function and forfeits all claim to excellence.

— Simone Weil

“A novel is the final common pathway of a writer's experiences, fears, wishes, thoughts, feelings & fantasies. All is distilled in a novel.”

— Mark Rubinstein

“Although the frightful is, perhaps rightly, conjoined in our minds with the darkly coloured, the harshly dissonant - with bludgeon blows and the odours…

— John Franklin Bardin

“The danger, when not seen, has the imperfect vagueness of human thought. The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father…

— Joseph Conrad

“More awful than the fear of danger was the fear of looking foolish—of being excited when others were laid back—of being somehow manipulated,”

— Toni Morrison