Novelists Quotes - Page 38

• I have a ways to go as a novelist. But what's great is, well, I frankly enjoyed the solitude. And I enjoyed being able to tell characters what to say and do without negotiating with an actor.

  Howard Gordon

  Character, Solitude, Able

  Source: deadline.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I guess I've always been an aspiring novelist. I went to Princeton and wrote a novel for my thesis.

  Howard Gordon

  Princeton, Novel, Thesis

  Source: deadline.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• To ask a novelist to talk about his novels is like asking somebody to cook about their dancing.

  Jim Crace

  Dancing, Asking, Cooks

  10 Copy quote

• You might learn as much about how to write by reading Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Wallace Stevens, Raymond Chandler, Saul Bellow, Paul Muldoon or a hundred other good novelists or poets than by seeing another round of John Ford revivals.

  David Denby

  Reading, Writing, Might

  Source: www.newyorker.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It sounds schmaltzy to say, but fiction is much more to do with love than people admit or acknowledge. The novelist has to not only love his characters - which you do, without even thinking about it, just as you love your children. But also to love the reader, and that's what I mean by the pleasure principle.

  Martin Amis

  Children, Love You, Character

  "New New Yorker Martin Amis Talks Terrorism, Pornography, Idyllic Brooklyn and American Decline". Interview with David Wallace-Wells, www.vulture.com. July 22, 2012.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I like the idea of being a novelist. I picture myself on the coast, the wind in my hair, horses galloping around me as I sit at my typewriter in the middle of a field.

  Sara Cox

  Horse, Hair, Typewriters

  "Interrogation: Sara Cox". Mirror Interview, www.mirror.co.uk. March 2, 2008.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you think reading a book is hard, you should try writing one. Because it's even harder. It's still not as hard as writing a game, though. If you discount the purely visual pop-up parts, a book is made almost entirely of words. As a novelist, you just need to think of a few decent strings of words and then fill the other 98% of the book with more or less random descriptions of things and exclamation points.

  Erik Wolpaw

  Book, Reading, Writing

  4 Copy quote

• Plato said that poets should be excluded from the ideal republic because they are such liars. I am a poet, and I affirm that this is true. About no subject are poets tempted to lie so much as about their own lives; I know one of them who has floated at least five versions of his autobiography, none of them true. I of course - being also a novelist - am a much more truthful person than that. But since poets lie, how can you believe me?

  Margaret Atwood

  Plato, Liars, Lying

  "Margaret Atwood : Writing Philosophy". Waterstone's Poetry Lecture, Delivered At Hay On Wye, canpoetry.library.utoronto.ca. June 1995.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.... Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.... Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists say. But they don't tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming, another third of it spent in telling lies.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Dream, Lying, Sleep

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.8, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm a novelist. Fortunately I don't have to rule the world.

  Salman Rushdie

  World

  4 Copy quote

• A novelist has mad a fictional representation of life. I doing so, he has revealed to us more significance, it may be, than he could find in life itself.

  Bernard DeVoto

  Mad, May, Significance

  7 Copy quote

• But in general, for the purposes of most novelists, the number of objects genuinely necessary for. . .describing a scene will be found to be very small.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Numbers, Purpose, Scene

  6 Copy quote

• I'm a novelist. I think fiction is important or I wouldn't be doing it, but most of it's bad.

  Dale Peck

  Thinking, Important, Fiction

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet, or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies.

  George Eliot

  Artist, Benefits, Poet

  George Eliot (2016). “The Essays of George Eliot: Top Novelist Focus”, p.98, 谷月社

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The great European novel started out as entertainment, and every true novelist is nostalgic for it. In fact, the themes of those great entertainments are terribly serious-think of Cervantes!

  Milan Kundera

  Thinking, Facts, Entertainment

  5 Copy quote

• A novelist should make you realize nothing is stable. If you don't believe anything with robustness, you're doing something more radical than anything else.

  Howard Jacobson

  Believe, Realizing, Should

  10 Copy quote

• Whatever fame a novelist my attain, it's always kind of an anonymous one. I can go anywhere, and no one knows who I am.

  Jonathan Kellerman

  Who I Am, Kind, Fame

  4 Copy quote

• Everything written, if it has anything in it, will offend someone, and if the mere taking of offence was to amount to a licence to kill the offender, well the world would be sadly underpopulated of novelists, columnists, bloggers, and the writers of editorials.

  Rex Murphy

  Would Be, World, Columnists

  9 Copy quote

• I think it's really boring, from the point of view of the novelist, to write about yourself. Tedious. But that's very hard to explain to people who really don't believe in the possibility of invention.

  Peter Carey

  Believe, Writing, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• If you tell a novelist, 'Life's not like that', he has to do something about it. The poet simply replies, 'No, but I am.'

  Philip Larkin

  Poet, Ifs

  17 Copy quote

• Many thousands of people have had the experience of finding the first friend, and it is none the less a wonder; as great a wonder (pace the novelists) as first love, or even greater.

  C. S. Lewis

  First Love, People, Pace

  4 Copy quote

• 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 cancels all the smart and interesting stuff out.

  Liev Schreiber

  Smart, Interesting, Stuff

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• That is the dream of all novelists-that one of their characters will become 'somebody.'

  Jose Saramago

  Dream, Character

  6 Copy quote

• Most of my life, I thought that I would end up a novelist. But then, in New York City, after college, I started a company with a college friend where we made documentary video for museums. In that capacity, I shot, directed, edited and began to learn the vocabulary of film.

  Jon Spaihts

  New York, College, Vocabulary

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• For me, film has been good because I'm able to work at top crack, working at something I love to do, in the only literary form in which you can still make money. There are no famous novelists, not as novelists used to be famous.

  William Monahan

  Cracks, Able, Film

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source