"I am looking for the novelists whose writing is an extension of their intellect rather than an extension of their neurosis."
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Novelists quotes
Novelists
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Novelists quotes (page 7 of 25)
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"The second person to write a story about a young boy and an escaped slave on the Mississippi wasn't a novelist, he was a typist."
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"Not until my middle thirties did I consider myself a novelist."
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"I’ve always said to people, "I don’t care what you call me as long as the checks don’t bounce and the family gets fed." But I never saw myself that way. I just saw myself as a novelist."
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"Kingsley Amis was one of a trio of brilliant comic novelists who made English literature sparkle in the twentieth century."
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"There was never a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn't be. He is too many people if he's any good."
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"I recognize myself to be an intensely naive person. Most novelists are, despite frequent pretensions to deep socio-political insight."
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"More than anything I am a novelist. But for me, an author's job is not only to create linguistically accomplished works. As an author I also want to stimulate discussion."
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"The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction."
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"You could do math early, but there are no brilliant 16-year-old novelists. They don't know the human condition yet."
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"Proust was the greatest novelist of the twentieth century, just as Tolstoy was in the nineteenth."
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"Without a doubt, I was born to want to make cinema, but the kind of cinema I want to make is not like commercial movies, which I enjoy myself, but I wanted to be the kind of filmmaker who wrote original work, sort of like a novelist would who deals with who we are and our times or our relationships."
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"Sometimes I wonder why I'm a novelist right now. There is no definite career reason why I became a writer. Something happened, and I became a writer. And now I'm a successful writer."
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"For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane."
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"As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday's dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change."
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"A pornographic novelist is one who exploits the sexual instinct as a prostitute does. A legitimate sex novel elucidates it or brings out its poetry, tragedy, or comedy."
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"The greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet, or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies."
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"The best novelist of my generation is an Italian living in Paris, still working and improving - Italo Calvino."
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"I'd defend the right for any novelist to experiment with form or language, but if people don't take to it, don't react by making out that they are thick."
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"The next time the novelist rings the bell I will not stir though the meeting-house burn down."
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