Novelists Quotes

“Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.”
― Lisa See, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

“A novelist can’t be without a kimono and pen!(Shigure)”
― Natsuki Takaya, Fruits Basket, Vol. 1

“It is true that novelists are shameless and obey no decent law, and they are not to be trusted on any account, but some Mysteries even they must honor.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

“The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets.”
― Christopher Morley, Parnassus on Wheels

“Fueled by my inspiration, I ran across the room to steal the cup of coffee the bookshelf had taken prisoner. Lapping the black watery brew like a hyena, I tossed the empty cup aside. I then returned to the chair to continue my divine act of creation. Hot blood swished in my head as my mighty pen stole across the page.”
― Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy

“Military people never seem to apologize for killing each other yet novelists feel ashamed for writing some nice inert paper book that is not certain to be read by anybody.”
― Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet

“But the other Ministers considered that to employ a magician was one thing, novelists were quite another and they would not stoop to it.”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn’t know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn’t know he was a novelist either."

(Interview in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Eighth Series, ed. George Plimpton, 1988)”
― John Irving

“...he was after all, a novelist...and a novelist was simply a fellow who got paid to tell lies. The bigger the lies, the better the pay.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half

“They know a million tricks, those novelists. Take Doctor Goebbels; that's how he started out, writing fiction. Appeals to the base lusts that hide in everyone no matter how respectable on the surface. Yes, the novelist knows humanity, how worthless they are, ruled by their testicles, swayed by cowardice, selling out every cause because of their greed - all he's got to do is thump on the drum, and there's his response. And he's laughing, of course, behind his hand at the effect he gets.”
― Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle

“I now understand that writing fiction was a seed planted in my soul, though I would not be ready to grow that seed for a long time.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, Traveling With Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story

“Like most novelists, I like to do exactly the opposite of what I'm told. It's in my nature as a novelist. Novelists can't trust anything they haven't seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands. (Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech, JERUSALEM POST, Feb. 15, 2009)”
― Haruki Murakami

“I believe that all novels, ... deal with character, and that it is to express character – not to preach doctrines, sing songs, or celebrate the glories of the British Empire, that the form of the novel, so clumsy, verbose, and undramatic, so rich, elastic, and alive, has been evolved ... The great novelists have brought us to see whatever they wish us to see through some character. Otherwise they would not be novelists, but poet, historians, or pamphleteers.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“A philosopher,' said Mrs. Cantanker, stalking across the study, black heels clicking, ruby silks whispering around her ankles, 'is one who attempts to capture the truths of the universe so precisely that they become too confusing to understand. A novelist is one who attempts to capture the truths of the universe in such a roundabout way that they become obvious to anyone who reads them.”
― Stefan Bachmann, Cinders & Sparrows

“As it is I'm a dated novelist, whom hardly anybody reads, or if they do, most of them don't understand what I am on about. Certainly I wish I had never written Voss, which is going to be everybody's albatross.”
― Patrick White

“They are very large in effect, these painters; very little self-conscious; they have smooth broad spaces in their minds where I am all prickles & promontories.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume One: 1915-1919

“Balzac was pretty funny. His philosophy is plain and simple, says basically that pure materialism is a recipe for madness. The only true knowledge for Balzac seems to be in superstition. Everything is subject to analysis. Horde your energy. That’s the secret of life. You can learn a lot from Mr. B. It’s funny to have him as a companion. He wears a monk’s robe and drinks endless cups of coffee. Too much sleep clogs up his mind. One of his teeth falls out, and he says, “What does this mean?” He questions everything. His clothes catch fire on a candle. He wonders if fire is a good sign. Balzac is hilarious.”
― Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One

“If novelists wrote honestly about their own lives, no one would read novels— and quite rightly!”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“His head was always in the clouds. 'I'm writing a novel,' he told her. As if that was something to crow about. As if there weren't enough novels in the world already.”
― Kate Atkinson, Shrines of Gaiety

“The novelist’s perception of motive and character is equally suited to the penetration of human deceit. I am determined never to apologise for my talents in either.”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas

“Novelist by day; screenwriter by night.”
― Adrienne Posey

“Invite him to poetry club," Doff said with a smirk. "See if he asks you to take a look at his Emily Dickinson."
Beatrice snorted. "How long did it take you to think that up?"
"Most of lunch, and the rest of G block," Doff said, shrugging modestly. "I started with 'read his Charles Dickens,' but Charles Dickens is a novelist."
"What about his Philip K. Dick?"
"Who's that?" asked Doff.
"He wrote the book that got turned into Blade Runner.”
― Jennifer Weiner, That Summer

“Everything about the guy screamed FICTION WRITER, though the species itself broke down more or less evenly into the subcategories:
1. Great American Novelist
2. -New York Times- Bestselling Author
Or that highly rare hybrid...
3. -New York Times- Bestselling Great American Novelist”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, The Plot

“To stomach the world for any prolonged length of time, one must either remain a child or become more than a man”
― Michael Lieber

“The hardest part of publishing a novel is attracting a reader, and especially one who would give a damn.”
― Veronica Purcell

“Ten Rules for the Novelist:

1. The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator.
  2. Fiction that isn’t an author’s personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn’t worth writing for anything but money.
  3. Never use the word then as a conjunction—we have and for this purpose. Substituting then is the lazy or tone-deaf writer’s non-solution to the problem of too many ands on the page.
  4. Write in third person unless a really distinctive first-person voice offers itself irresistibly.
  5. When information becomes free and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along with it.
  6. The most purely autobiographical fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more autobiographical story than The Metamorphosis.
  7. You see more sitting still than chasing after.
  8. It’s doubtful that anyone with an Internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.
  9. Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.
10. You have to love before you can be relentless.”
― Jonathan Franzen, The End of the End of the Earth: Essays

“She prefers to think she became a better woman. But she has hurt her sister, and she knows it. The fact that she did it to save herself is no excuse. Nor is the knowledge that she's only done what writers do. A novelist is just a cottonmouth with a laptop.”
― Steve Yarbrough, Stay Gone Days

“A decision which gonna make you happy, is like a stingin' of ant or bee, it gonna pain you temporary for permanent value.”
― Mr. Dee Boss or Promse Stash

“Novelists, I reflected, are rather apt to pass in silence over the rigours of travel. Our heroines are generally accommodated in private carriages, complete with fur lap robes, enormous muffs, and hot bricks to their feet; they travel post, with private teams of horses at every stage; and invariably are pursued by a rogue so handsome and dangerous as to render them insensible for the better part of the journey.”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas

“There is more rejoicing in heaven over one lost poet found than in 99 novelists who have never strayed.”
― Dana Gioia, Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture