Franz Kafka
Writer
"I am a cage, in search of a bird."
Novelists quotes
Novelists
488 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Franz Kafka
Writer
"All language is but a poor translation."
Paulo Coelho
Writer
"Be proud of your scars. They remind you that you have the will to live."
Clarice Lispector
Novelist, Short Story Writer
"Everything in the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born."
Yasunari Kawabata
Novelist
"Cosmic time is the same for everyone, but human time differs with each person. Time flows in the same way for all human beings; every human being flows through time in a different way."
Quote collection
Novelists quotes (page 1 of 25)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing."
Read quote
67 likes
"I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you - it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists."
Read quote
55 likes
"Most writers are not quick-witted when they talk. Novelists, in particular, drag themselves around in society like gut-shot bears."
Read quote
51 likes
"This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me."
Read quote
46 likes
"You must be prepared to work always without applause."
Read quote
30 likes
"Never say you know the last word about any human heart."
Read quote
28 likes
"What greater wealth is there than to own your life and to spend it on growing? Every living thing must grow. It can't stand still. It must grow or perish."
Read quote
26 likes
"You have to say I am forgiven again and again until it becomes the story you believe about yourself."
Read quote
24 likes
"The novelist must be his own most harsh critic and also his own most loving admirer and about both he must say nothing."
Read quote
23 likes
"Do remember, though, that sometimes the people you oppress become mightier than you would like."
Read quote
23 likes
"I would like to spend the rest of my days in a place so silent–and working at a pace so slow–that I would be able to hear myself living."
Read quote
22 likes
"Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life."
Read quote
22 likes
"For me, as a beginning novelist, all other living writers form a control group for whom the world is a placebo."
Read quote
18 likes
""Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg." Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?"
Read quote
17 likes
"I could see now that a literary education did not fit one for the popular novelist's trade.Once you had started using words like flavicomous or acroamatic, because you liked the sound of them, you were lost."
Read quote
16 likes
"In effect I am not a novelist, but rather a failed essayist who started to write novels because he didn't know how to write essays."
Read quote
16 likes
"You simply cannot invent any conspiracy theory so ridiculous and obviously satirical that some people somewhere don't already believe it."
Read quote
15 likes
"Since I became a novelist I have discovered that I am biased. Either I think a new novel is worse than mine and I don’t like it, or I suspect it is better than my novels and I don’t like it."
Read quote
14 likes
"Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives."
Read quote
13 likes
"I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing."
Read quote
13 likes