Novelists quotes
488 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside novelists — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Morality in the novel is the trembling instability of the balance. When the novelist puts his thumb in the scale, to pull down the balance to his own predilection, that is immorality."
"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."
"The thought of the novelist lies not in the remarks of his characters or even in their introspection but in the plight he has invented for his characters - in the juxtaposition of those characters and in the lifelike ramifications of the ensemble they make: their density, their substantiality, their lived existence actualized in all its nuanced particulars, is in fact his thought metabolized."
"The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words."
"I know I'm a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science."
"They can't yank a novelist like they can a pitcher. A novelist has to go the full nine, even if it kills him."
"It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader."
"A novelist has to know enough about a subject to fool the passenger next to him on an airplane."
"I want to be a popular novelist who's also serious, or a serious novelist who's also very accessible."
"Novelists should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real life."
"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.”"
"A novelist must preserve a childlike belief in the importance of things which common sense considers of no great consequence."
"Just as the painter thinks with his brush and paints the novelist thinks with his story."
"Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets); and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying."
"Society is the stage on which manners are shown; novels are the literature. Novels are the journal or record of manners; and the new importance of these books derives from the fact, that the novelist begins to penetrate the surface, and treat this part of life more worthily."
"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."
"The novelist can't successfully depict such horrifying reality. But she can, and must, try, to bear witness. There are many ways of doing this; the mode I prefer is indirect."
"A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past."
"If the novelist isn't surprised by where his book ends up, he or she probably hasn't written anything worth remembering."
"Most novelists write about twisted lives."
