Novelists Quotes - Page 2

Some people bring out the worst in you, others bring out the best, and then there are those remarkably rare, addictive ones who just bring out the most. Of everything.

Most writers are not quick-witted when they talk. Novelists, in particular, drag themselves around in society like gut-shot bears.

A whim, a passing mood, readily induces the novelist to move hearth and home elsewhere. He can always plead work as an excuse to get him out of the clutches of bothersome hosts.

One of the cruelest things you can do to another person is pretend you care about them more than you really do.

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.

A playwright must be his own audience. A novelist may lose his readers for a few pages; a playwright never dares lose his audience for a minute.

It's my belief that people enter your life at exactly the right time.

You know what they say: When people start burning books they'll soon burn human beings.

God pity the poor novelist.

And then, as if written by the hand of a bad novelist, an incredible thing happened.

I want to write books that unlock the traffic jam in everybody's head.

I’ve always thought a novelist only has one character and that is himself or herself.

History is the history of human behavior, and human behavior is the raw material of fiction. Most people recognize that novelists do research to get the facts right - how a glove factory works, for example, or how courtesans in imperial Japan dressed.

But here's the thing: what you do as a screenwriter is you sell your copyright. As a novelist, as a poet, as a playwright, you maintain your copyright.

The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets.

The terrorist is the one with the small bomb.

Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life.

You must be prepared to work always without applause.

A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.

The true novelist is one who understands the work as a continuous poem, is a myth-maker, and the wonder of the art resides in the endless different ways of telling a story.

Never say you know the last word about any human heart.

As a novelist, I ask of myself only that I tell the truth and that I tell it beautifully.

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.

I'm at the point where going forward is easier than going back.

Do remember, though, that sometimes the people you oppress become mightier than you would like.