Novelists Quotes - Page 4

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.

You simply cannot invent any conspiracy theory so ridiculous and obviously satirical that some people somewhere don't already believe it.

A filmmaker has almost the same freedom as a novelist has when he buys himself some paper.

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.

Real love never fails.

I knew Id always be a second-rate academic, and I thought, Well, Id rather be a second-rate novelist or even a third-rate one.

If this were fiction, could even the most brilliant novelist contrive to make credible so short a period in which pride had been subdued and prejudice overcome?

A novelist can’t be without a kimono and pen!(Shigure)

If the novelist shares his or her problems with the characters, he or she is able to study his personal unconscious.

Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn't know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn't know he was a novelist either.

Dreams cannot be tamed. Dreamers cannot be ruled.

We can sell our time, but we can't buy it back.

The suspense in a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist himself, who is intensely curious too about what will happen to the hero.

The few really great-the major novelists ... are significant in terms of the human awareness they promote; awareness of the possibilities of life.

Historians tell the story of the past, novelists the story of the present.

No matter how little a man has he will find that he will always settle for less.

Great novelists are philosopher novelists - that is, the contrary of thesis-writers.

With a novelist, like a surgeon, you have to get a feeling that you've fallen into good hands - someone from whom you can accept the anesthetic with confidence.

Not all novelists are power-hungry madman. Some are power-hungry madwomen.

If you act like a victim, you are likely to be treated as one.

I have been born more times than anybody except Krishna.

I do have a very strong sense that most of the terrible things in life happen suddenly and unpredictably, and certainly can sweep you off in different directions, and that is always of interest to a novelist.

The economy of a novelist is a little like that of a careful housewife who is unwilling to throw away anything that might perhaps serve its turn.

Expansion, that is the idea the novelist must cling to, not completion, not rounding off, but opening out.

After I convinced them that I was a harmless novelist, I actually got them to give me a tour of the harem - which is usually off limits for tourists.