Novelists Quotes - Page 35

• Poets think in short lines. Unless you're Samuel Beckett, Twitter might be more difficult for novelists.

  Kenneth Goldsmith

  Thinking, Lines, Might

  Source: logger.believermag.com

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• There are novels that end well, but in between there are human beings acting like human beings. And human beings are not perfect. All of the motives a human being may have, which are mixed, that's the novelists' materials. That's where they have to go. And a lot of that just isn't pretty. We like to think of ourselves as really, really good people. But look in the mirror. Really look. Look at your own mixed motives. And then multiply that.

  Margaret Atwood

  Thinking, Mirrors, People

  "Margaret Atwood Interview". Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. December 2, 2010.

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• I am a born novelist, which does not happen all that often. There are people who try to write for a certain time, then they become Ministers of Culture under de Gaulle, and they begin living their own fictions.

  Gore Vidal

  Writing, People, Trying

  "The End of Gore Vidal". Interview with Lila Azam Zanganeh, www.guernicamag.com. August 15, 2012.

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• Novelists have to love humanity to write anything worthwhile. Poets have to love themselves.

  Marita Golden

  Writing, Humanity, Poet

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• Americans and their desire to be novelists, the American novel should be listed in medical dictionaries alongside Megalomania and Obsessional Neuroses.

  Francine du Plessix Gray

  Desire, United States, Neurosis

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• The novelist is more a marathon runner than long-distance runner and the kind of courage it takes working in such isolation cannot be underestimated. I really respect my fellow writers on this front.

  Tobsha Learner

  Distance, Long, Marathon

  "'Sphinx' by Tobsha Learner". The Australian Women's Weekly Interview, www.nowtolove.com.au. May 11, 2009.

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• Novelist time is reptile time; novelists tend to be ruminant and brooding, nursers of ancient grievances, second-guessers, Tuesday afternoon quarterbacks, retrospectators, endlessly, like slumping hitters, studying the film of their old whiffs.

  Michael Chabon

  Tuesday, Reptiles, Afternoon

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• I think of myself now as a writer, although I wouldn't go as far as to say 'novelist' because that sounds like a Victorian person.

  Dawn French

  Thinking, Sound, Persons

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• Directors who have inspired me include Billy Wilder, Federico Fellini, lngmar Bergman, John Ford, Orson Welles, Werner Herzog, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Francis Ford Coppola and Ernst Lubitsch. In art school, I studied painters like Edward Hopper, who used urban motifs, Franz Kafka is my favorite novelist. My approach to film stems from my art background, as I go beyond the story to the sub-conscious mood created by sound and images.

  David Lynch

  Art, School, Sound

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• Only a small percentage of novelists, painters, musicians, scientists, anywhere in the world, are talented. But there are many more in Hollywood than one would expect from looking movies.

  Hortense Powdermaker

  Musician, Hollywood, World

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• Curiosity is the prime requisite of the novelist.

  Lucy Poate Stebbins

  Curiosity, Prime

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• Intensely vivid characters, terrible crimes, and a brutal deep-frozen landscape all prove beyond a reasonable doubt that cold nurtures good and evil as readily as heat ... and that Giles Blunt is a really tremendous crime novelist.

  Lee Child

  Character, Evil, Doubt

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• For purposes of marketing, writers are designated as poets, novelists, or something else. But writing is about matchmaking, an attempt to marry sensations with apt words.

  Teju Cole

  Writing, Marketing, Purpose

  "My hero: Michael Ondaatje by Teju Cole" by Teju Cole, www.theguardian.com. February 17, 2012.

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• The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.

  Teju Cole

  Morning, Mean, Emotional

  Teju Cole @tejucole, twitter.com. March 8, 2012.

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• I wanted to write about the Korean War, but I had no entry into it that made the kind of sense it needs to make for a novelist.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  War, Writing, Needs

  Interview with James Mustich, www.barnesandnoble.com. March 5, 2010.

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• But the thing is, from the perspective of a novelist there is a brand of lying that feels more honest than the actual facts of an event. Lying as a way to move closer to the truth, or to illuminate ow something actually feels in a way the mere facts cannot.

  Ron Currie Jr.

  Lying, Moving, Perspective

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• Lauren Kirshner creates a first-person narrator you never stop rooting for. . . . [Where We Have to Go] highlights Kirshner as a new novelist to watch. A very strong, original debut.

  Zoe Whittall

  Strong, Narrators, Watches

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• I knew Id always be a second-rate academic, and I thought, Well, Id rather be a second-rate novelist or even a third-rate one.

  Sarah Waters

  Academic, Rate, Wells

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• Literature has neglected the old and their emotions. The novelists never told us that in love, as in other matters, the young are just beginners and that the art of loving matures with age and experience.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Art, Age, Beginners

  Isaac Bashevis Singer (2004). “Collected Stories: One Night in Brazil to The Death of Methuselah”

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• Most novelists I know went through a period of intense self-examination and self-loathing after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. I certainly did.

  Jay McInerney

  Self, World, Examination

  "The uses of invention" by Jay McInerney, www.theguardian.com. September 16, 2005.

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• I am a huge fan of Alan Furst. Furst is the best in the business--the most talented espionage novelist of our generation.

  Vince Flynn

  Our Generation, Fans, Generations

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• I'm proud to be a crime novelist. What I've chosen is the best way to convey the questions I'm trying to raise.

  George Pelecanos

  Trying, Proud, Way

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• Comic books themselves are getting more literate. And there are people who are screenwriters and television writers and novelists who are writing for the comics, for some reason, they love doing it and some of the art work in the comics, I mean it rivals anything you'll see hanging on the walls of museums, they're illustrations more than drawings and all the people are discovering this and they're turning on to it.

  Stan Lee

  Art, Wall, Book

  Source: movieweb.com

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• Things seem to be at a boiling point all the time. In fact, it has been that way my whole life. I find it interesting, and I like the fact that the emotions are in your face all the time. You always know where you stand. None of that "we don't have any racial problems here" attitude that you get, say, up north. All of this is rich fodder for a crime novelist.

  George Pelecanos

  Attitude, Up North, Interesting

  Interview with Keith Phipps, www.avclub.com. September 19, 2001.

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• In Europe, I'm recognized on the street sometimes. And that's cool, because I don't have to live there and deal with it every day. Unless you're Stephen King - a great writer, by the way, and anyone who says different knows nothing about the craft - you're more likely to be recognized in America if you play in a soap opera than if you're a novelist.

  George Pelecanos

  Kings, Europe, Play

  Interview with Keith Phipps, www.avclub.com. September 19, 2001.

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