Novelist Quotes

• 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.

  

  Oscar Wilde
  • Modern
  • Dull
  • Delightful

• You perhaps know me as a novelist. Literature is one of the arts – in fact, the noblest of the arts. That is not my opinion; it was first expressed by the ancients. As art, literature has many similarities with the other art forms.

  

  F. Sionil Jose
  • Art
  • Opinion
  • Literature

• I'm a novelist, not a social scientist or a commentator.

  

  Rachel Cusk
  • Social
  • Scientist
  • Novelist

• If you're a novelist, as I am in real life, you're usually so desperate for any kind of feedback.

  

  Adam Mansbach
  • Life
  • Real
  • Feedback

• I am not expecting anyone to feel sorry for me, but when friends ask how it feels to be a debut novelist who has also been long listed for the Man Booker prize, I have to admit that my response has confused me. I am so overwhelmed, so delighted, so honoured and so surprised, I have come out in a violent cold.

  

  Rachel Joyce
  • Surprised
  • Prize
  • Overwhelmed

• I would love to see young writers come out of college and know there is a possibility to be a novelist.

  

  Pat Conroy
  • Know
  • See
  • Possibility

• I am the luckiest novelist in the world. I was a first-time novelist who wasn't awash in rejection slips, whose manuscript didn't disappear in slush piles. I have had a wonderful time.

  

  Vikas Swarup
  • Time
  • Wonderful
  • Rejection

• I'm not really a mainstream novelist!

  

  Irvine Welsh
  • Really
  • Mainstream
  • Novelist

• I am not an academic who happens to have written a novel. I am a novelist who happens to be quite good academically.

  

  A. S. Byatt
  • Academic
  • Novelist
  • Academically

• I've been a novelist since 1995 and have had novels in and out of option, and watching that process just made me realize that I have to live by what I teach my students, because I teach screenwriting at Spellman.

  

  Tananarive Due
  • Live
  • Teach
  • Option

• The thing I love about being a novelist is that with each project, you invent a new world. You approach it with a different set of aesthetic and structural ideas, and you grapple with a different series of problems in figuring out how to tell the story. And yet there are certain concerns that stay constant.

  

  Adam Mansbach
  • World
  • Ideas
  • Story

• I'm not a biographer, I'm a novelist.

  

  Barry Unsworth
  • Novelist

• I don't get involved in casting, budgets, location or promotion. Just the script. And, of course, the promotional tour. Which is fine with me - I'm a novelist.

  

  Nicholas Sparks
  • Budget
  • Script
  • Location

• A novelist must know what his last chapter is going to say and one way or another work toward that last chapter. ... To me it is utterly basic, yet it seems like it's a great secret.

  

  Leon Uris
  • Work
  • Great
  • Secret

• I'm a novelist at heart. My sole intention is to write the best novel possible. I don't think about the film potential at all.

  

  Nicholas Sparks
  • Film
  • Novel
  • Potential

• The novelist is required to open his eyes on the world around him and look. If what he sees is not highly edifying, he is still required to look. Then he is required to reproduce, with words, what he sees.

  

  Flannery O'Connor
  • World
  • Words
  • Eyes

• The complete novelist would come into the world with a catalog of qualities like this. He would own the concentration of a Trappist monk, the organizational ability of a Prussian field marshal, the insight into human relations of a Viennese psychologist, the discipline of a man who prints the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin, the exquisite sense of timing of an Olympic gymnast, and by the way, a natural instinct and flair for exceptional use of language.

  

  Leon Uris
  • World
  • Prayer
  • Discipline

• ... the novelist is bound by the reasonable possibilities, not the probabilities, of his culture.

  

  Flannery O'Connor
  • Culture
  • Possibilities
  • Novelist

• 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.

  

  George Bernard Shaw
  • Instinct
  • Pornographic
  • Prostitute

• The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.

  

  Arthur Schopenhauer
  • Business
  • Events
  • Novelist

• A novelist can’t be without a kimono and pen!

  

  Natsuki Takaya
  • Pen
  • Novelist
  • Kimono

• I'm not a novelist, I'm a storyteller. There is no art in what I do, no mystique.

  

  Alistair Cooke
  • Art
  • Storyteller
  • Mystique

• I'm probably the only novelist who has ever written about political fugitives who actually knew a lot about them, had contact with them, and had a realistic notion of how they survived.

  

  Marge Piercy
  • Political
  • Notion
  • Realistic

• A novelist is someone who sits around the house all day in his underwear, trying not to smoke.

  

  Scott Spencer
  • Smoke
  • Novelist
  • Underwear

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