Novelists Quotes - Page 27

• Teaching has ruined more American novelists than drink.

  Gore Vidal

  Education, Teaching, Drinking

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• The novelist does not long to see the
  lion eat grass. He realizes that one and
  the same God created the wolf and the
  lamb, then smiled, “seeing that his
  work was good.”

  Andre Gide

  Long, Doe, Lambs

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• There's a curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists...Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness. What writers used to do before we were all incorporated.

  Don DeLillo

  Taken, Thinking, Years

  "Mao II". Book by Don DeLillo, 1991.

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• The biggest downside to being a novelist is writing the novel.

  Jill Barnett

  Writing, Novel

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• I am the luckiest novelist in the world. I was a first-time novelist who wasn't awash in rejection slips, whose manuscript didn't disappear in slush piles. I have had a wonderful time.

  Vikas Swarup

  Rejection, World, Firsts

  "I'm the luckiest novelist in the world" by Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. January 15, 2009.

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• Bitter criticism caused the sensitive Thomas Hardy, one of the finest novelists ever to enrich English literature, to give up forever the writing of fiction. Criticism drove Thomas Chatterton, the English poet, to suicide. . . . Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain - and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.

  Dale Carnegie

  Suicide, Giving Up, Writing

  Dale Carnegie (2016). “How to win friends & influence people”, p.21, Diamond Pocket Books Pvt Ltd

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• In a rough way the short story writer is to the novelist as a cabinetmaker is to a house carpenter.

  Annie Proulx

  House, Insightful, Story Writers

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• The difficulty of saying I-a phrase from the East German novelist Christa Wolf. But once having said it, as we realize the necessity to go further, isn't there a difficulty of saying 'we'? You cannot speak for me. I cannot speak for you. Two thoughts: there is no liberation that only knows how to say 'I'; there is no collective movement that speaks for each of us all the way through.

  Adrienne Rich

  Two, Phrases, Movement

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• In order for a long piece of work to engage a novelist over an extended period of time, it has to deal with questions that you find very important, that you're trying to work out.

  Donna Tartt

  Order, Long, Work Out

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• The job of the novelist is to invent: to embroider, to color, to embellish, to entertain, to make things up. The art of what I do lies not in research or even recollection but primarily in invention.

  Donna Tartt

  Art, Jobs, Lying

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• I believe, in a funny way, the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for an experience that has not really been spoken for.

  Donna Tartt

  Jobs, Believe, Experience

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• As a novelist, I have a somewhat higher soapbox to stand on than most people do when it comes to talking back to the merchants of fear.

  L. Neil Smith

  Talking, People, Soapbox

  "Merchants of Fear" by L. Neil Smith presented to the Boulder County Libertarian Party, February 20, 1994.

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• The function of the novelist... is to comment upon life as he sees it.

  Frank Norris

  Function, Comment

  Frank Norris (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Frank Norris (Illustrated)”, p.2332, Delphi Classics

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• You do not conceive a novel as easily as you conceive a child, nor even half as easily as you create nonfiction work. A journalist amasses facts, anecdotes and interviews with top brass. Enough of these add up to a book. A novelist demands quite different things. He has to find himself in his materials, to know for sure how he would feel and act and the events he writes about. In addition, he requires a catalyst — a person, idea, or emotion which coalesces his ingredients and makes them jell into a solid purpose.

  Zelda Popkin

  Children, Book, Writing

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• Love. Children are loving, they dont gossip, they dont complain, theyre just open-hearted. Theyre ready for you. They dont judge. They dont see things by way of color. Theyre very child-like. Thats the problem with adults: they lose that child-like quality. And thats the level of inspiration thats so needed and is so important for creating and writing songs and for a sculptor, a poet or a novelist. Its that same kind of innocence, that same level of consciousness, that you create from. And kids have it. I feel it right away from animals and children and nature. Of course.

  Michael Jackson

  Song, Children, Inspiration

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• Most contemporary novelists, especially the American and the French, are too subjective, mesmerized by private demons; theyre enraptured by their navels and confined by a view that ends with their own toes.

  Truman Capote

  Views, Toes, Demon

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• My life is actually very boring. The life of a bestselling novelist sounds like it ought to be spectacularly glamorous and fun, but in fact I spend most of my time incognito, and in fact were you to pass me in the street you would think I was just another dowdy suburban mom.

  Jane Green

  Mom, Fun, Thinking

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• When I was in fourth grade, a novelist came to talk to my English class. She told us that being an author meant sitting at the kitchen table in pajamas, drinking tea with the dogs at your feet.

  J. Courtney Sullivan

  Dog, Drinking, Feet

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• I am looking for the novelists whose writing is an extension of their intellect rather than an extension of their neurosis.

  Tom Robbins

  Writing, Neurosis, Intellect

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates”, p.31, Bantam

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• Screenwriting is a terrible way to make a living and I always try to talk anyone out of it. Until you sit in a story meeting with studio executives with no particular ability or actors who haven't even graduated high school telling you exactly how to change your script, you haven't experienced what it's really like to be a screenwriter in Hollywood. Also, unlike novelists and playwrights, you don't own the copyright on your original material. It hurts when you sell a project you love and then suddenly the project you really cared about will never see the light of day.

  Amy Holden Jones

  Hurt, School, Light

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• It seemed to me you could do anything in comics. So I started doing my thing, which is mainly influenced by novelists, stand-up comedians, that sort of thing

  Harvey Pekar

  Comedian, Doing Me, Stand Up Comedian

  Harvey Pekar, Michael Rhode (2008). “Harvey Pekar: Conversations”, p.104, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Short-story writing requires an exquisite sense of balance. Novelists, frankly, can get away with more. A novel can have a dull spot or two, because the reader has made a different commitment.

  Lynn Abbey

  Commitment, Writing, Two

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• To capture the human cost of fallen empire with all its horror and absurdity, Sheets offers the right combination: the political insight of a top reporter and the power of a novelist.

  Martin Cruz Smith

  Political, Empires, Cost

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• Yes, one uses what one knows, but autobiography means something else. I should never be able to write a real autobiography; I always end by falsifying and fictionalizing—I’m a liar, in fact. That means I’m a novelist, after all. I write about what I know.

  Alberto Moravia

  Real, Liars, Writing

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• The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question.

  Milan Kundera

  World, Teach, Reader

  "The Most Original Book of the Season". Interview with Philip Roth, www.nytimes.com. November 30, 1980.

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