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

~ Natsuki Takaya

Natsuki Takaya Humor Kimono Novelists Shigure Writers

Like most novelists, I like to do exactly the opposite of what I'm told. It's in my nature as a novelist. Novelists can't trust anything they haven't seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands. (Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech, JERUSALEM POST, Feb. 15, 2009)

~ Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami Novelists Truth Writers Writing

Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.

~ Lisa See

Lisa See Books Novelists Reading Storytellers Storytelling Writers Writing

Military people never seem to apologize for killing each other yet novelists feel ashamed for writing some nice inert paper book that is not certain to be read by anybody.

~ Leonora Carrington

Leonora Carrington Books Military Novelists Writing

Fueled by my inspiration, I ran across the room to steal the cup of coffee the bookshelf had taken prisoner. Lapping the black watery brew like a hyena, I tossed the empty cup aside. I then returned to the chair to continue my divine act of creation. Hot blood swished in my head as my mighty pen stole across the page.

~ Roman Payne

Roman Payne Art Artists Artists Life Coffee Creation Creativity Fiction Writing Hyena Inspiration Novelists Payne Roman Payne Work Writing

They know a million tricks, those novelists. Take Doctor Goebbels; that's how he started out, writing fiction. Appeals to the base lusts that hide in everyone no matter how respectable on the surface. Yes, the novelist knows humanity, how worthless they are, ruled by their testicles, swayed by cowardice, selling out every cause because of their greed - all he's got to do is thump on the drum, and there's his response. And he's laughing, of course, behind his hand at the effect he gets.

~ Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick Art Novelists Writing

I now understand that writing fiction was a seed planted in my soul, though I would not be ready to grow that seed for a long time.

~ Sue Monk Kidd

Sue Monk Kidd Fiction Novelists Novels Writers Writing

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 ei

~ John Irving

John Irving Freud Novelists Psychiatrists Science Sigmund Freud

Novelists and the literary world play an important part in shaping languages. The Swahili they write influence the readers and their languages. The literary obstacle in Tanzania is not that people do not read, but that they don’t read because there are no interesting writers.

~ Enock Maregesi

Enock Maregesi Interesting Writers Languages Literary Obstacle Literary World Novelists People Read Readers Shaping Languages Swahili Tanzania Write Writers

It eases my soul that I share a house with [Cassandra King] a novelist of such rare and distinctive gifts.

~ Pat Conroy

Pat Conroy Cassandra King Gratitude Marriage Novelists Pat Conroy

I am certain that a novelist is someone who attributes a different reality-value to the characters and events of his story than to those of 'real' life. A novelist is someone who confuses his own life with that of his characters.

~ Alain Robbe-Grillet

Alain Robbe-Grillet Fiction Novelists Novels Reality

Novelists are basically inviting their readers to play a game of pretend. That's what fiction is: a game of pretend.

~ Marty Rubin

Marty Rubin Fiction Novelists Novels Pretense Readers

Novelists congratulate themselves on their creation of this kind of “character” or that kind of “character,” and readers pretend to talk knowingly about “character,” but all it amounts to is that the writers are enjoying themselves writing lies and the readers are enjoying themselves reading lies. In fact, there is no such thing as character, something fixed and final. The real thing is something that novelists don’t know how to write about. Or, if they tried, the end result would never be a novel. Real people are strangely difficult to make sense out of. Even a god would have his hands full trying.

~ Sōseki Natsume

Sōseki Natsume Fiction Human Nature Novelists Writing

He had entered another imaginative world, one connected to the beginning of his life as a writer, to the Napoleonic world that had been a lifelong metaphor for the power of art, for the empire of his own creation He began to dictate notes for a new novel, fragments of the book he imagines himself to be writing. As if he were now writing a novel of which his own altered consciousness was the dramatic center, he dictated a vision of himself as Napoleon and his own family as the Imperial Bonapartes....William and Alice he grasped with his regent hand, addressing his 'dear and most esteemed brother and sister.' To them, to whom he had granted countries, he now gave the responsibility of supervising the detailed plans he had created for 'the decoration of certain apartments, here of the Louvre and Tuileries, which you will find addressed in detail to artists and workment who take them in hand.' He was himself the 'imperial e

~ Fred Kaplan

Fred Kaplan Art Creativity Death Delirium Hallucination Imagination Language Novel Writing Novelists Sentence Structure Syntax Writing

As it is I'm a dated novelist, whom hardly anybody reads, or if they do, most of them don't understand what I am on about. Certainly I wish I had never written Voss, which is going to be everybody's albatross.

~ Patrick White

Patrick White Literature Novelists Novels Voss Novel

Copywriters, journalists, mainstream authors, ghostwriters, bloggers and advertising creatives have as much right to think of themselves as good writers as academics, poets, or literary novelists.

~ Sara Sheridan

Sara Sheridan Academics Advertising Authors Bloggers Commercial Creatives Ghostwriting Journalists Literary Literature Mainstream Novelists Poets Writers Writing

Grabbing readers by the imagination is a writer's job.

~ Sara Sheridan

Sara Sheridan Authors Grab Imagination Job Novelists Purpose Readers Responsbility Writers Writing

But the other Ministers considered that to employ a magician was one thing, novelists were quite another and they would not stoop to it.

~ Susanna Clarke

Susanna Clarke Magic Magicians Novelists

It is true that novelists are shameless and obey no decent law, and they are not to be trusted on any account, but some Mysteries even they must honor.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

Catherynne M. Valente Mysteries Novelists Writers

No poet or novelist wishes he was the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number believe their wish has been granted.

~ W.h. Auden

W.h. Auden Ego Egotism Novelists Writers

I believe that all novels, ... deal with character, and that it is to express character – not to preach doctrines, sing songs, or celebrate the glories of the British Empire, that the form of the novel, so clumsy, verbose, and undramatic, so rich, elastic, and alive, has been evolved ... The great novelists have brought us to see whatever they wish us to see through some character. Otherwise they would not be novelists, but poet, historians, or pamphleteers.

~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin British Empire Character Leguin Novelists Writers

After finishing 1st draft of a novel, I have the characters, dialogue, scenes, and a plotline. I used to think this meant I knew where the story was going, and what the book was about.I have learned over the years, this ain’t so.As I work through its 2nd draft, characters start to nudge each other. The story itself takes its first soft and shallow breath, and one could imagine he hears a little bit of a heartbeat. Passions deepen, and emotional threads start to weave through what had earlier just been little more than a sequence of events.On the 3rd run through, the characters stand tall. Some break free of my earlier concepts of what they were all about, what they wanted, how they related to each other, and where they were going.From then on, THEY set the pace, and I do my best to honor them in becoming what THEY choose to be.From then on, my friends; we have a story!By the end of the 3rd draft, I have enough of an idea of where the characters are going, and how their passions empower the story, or tear it apart, that I can start cutting away, and cutting away, anything that isn’t that.Until we reach the point where there is not a single word left anywhere in the book, that isn’t a vital, dynamic, organic contributor to the living whole.

~ Edward Fahey

Edward Fahey Fiction Writing Novelists Novels Writers Writers On Writing Writers On Writing Books Writing Writing Process

Novelist by day, screenwriter by night.

~ A.d. Posey

A.d. Posey Ad Posey Inspirational Novelist Quotes Novelists Screenplays Screenwriter Quotes Screenwriters Screenwriting Storytellers Storytelling Write Writers Writing Writing Quotes

To be motivated to write a novel, I need to be unable not to write.

~ Johnny Rich

Johnny Rich Motivation Novel Writing Novelists Novels Writer Writers Writers Block Writers On Writing

Passionate attraction to someone of the opposite sex will make a hero or a fool of a novelist each time.

~ Roman Payne

Roman Payne Novelist Novelist And Poet Novelist Quotes Novelists Novelists Life Writer Writer Inspiration Writers Writers And Writing Writers Life Writers On Writing Writers Quotes Writing Writing Advice Writing Craft Writing From The Heart Writing Inspiration Writing Inspirational Writing Life Writing Philosophy Writing Process Writing Tips

I read not so long ago about the construction of a large telescope in Chile's Atacama Desert, where rainfall can average a millimetre a year and the air is fifty times as dry as the air in Death Valley. Needless to say, skies over the Atacama are pristine. The pilgrim astronomer ventures to the earth’s ravaged reaches in order to peer more keenly at other worlds, and I suppose the novelist is up to something similar.

~ Brad Leithauser

Brad Leithauser Astronomer Astronomy Chile Metaphor Novelists Telescope Writers Writing Writing Craft Writing Life

Try everything, listen to everyone. Follow no one. You are your own story guru!

~ Jeff Lyons

Jeff Lyons Novel Novel Writing Novelist Novelists Novels Novels Books Screenplay Writing Screenplays Screenwriter Screenwriters Scripts Story Development

With the right tools, you can write anything ...

~ Jeff Lyons

Jeff Lyons Novel Novel Writing Novelist Novelists Novels Novels Books Screenplay Writing Screenplays Screenwriter Screenwriters Scripts Story Development

Novelists should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real life. If they observed this duty conscientiously, they would give us fewer pictures chequered with vivid contrasts of light and shade; they would seldom elevate their heroes and heroines to the heights of rapture — still seldomer sink them to the depths of despair; for if we rarely taste the fulness of joy in this life, we yet more rarely savour the acrid bitterness of hopeless anguish.

~ Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë Estoicism Novelists Real Life Facts Writing Process

The writing talent of Edinburgh is textured - we have poets, novelists, non-fiction writers, dramatists and more.

~ Sara Sheridan

Sara Sheridan Drama Edinburgh Non Fiction Novelists Poets Scotland Scottish Talent Writing

The novelist is condemned to wander all his life. Homeless and blind like Oedipus he wanders until death. And so let us protect the novelist and adore him, with pity, honor, and love.

~ Roman Payne

Roman Payne Authors Authors On Authors Novelists Novelists Life Oedipus Oedipus The King Writers Life

...he was after all, a novelist...and a novelist was simply a fellow who got paid to tell lies. The bigger the lies, the better the pay.

~ Stephen King

Stephen King Authors Novelists Truth Writing

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

~ Christopher Morley

Christopher Morley Bicycles Novelists Poets

Novelists invent characters, poets invent themselves.

~ Marty Rubin

Marty Rubin Inventing Ourselves Invention Novelists Poets