#novelist

If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist. ↗

— Norman Mailer

#enough #hands #his #journalist #lawyer

I'm mostly a novelist these days, but I have written short stories in Fantasy, Science Fiction and horror. ↗

— Sarah Zettel

#fantasy #fiction #horror #i #mostly

You have to go out of your way as a suspense novelist to find situations where the protagonists are somewhat helpless and in real danger. ↗

— Nelson DeMille

#find #go #helpless #novelist #out

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

— Edmond de Goncourt

#novelists #past #present #story #tell

Novelists are always resisting autobiographical readings of their work, because they know how false those can be. ↗

— Jeffrey Eugenides

#autobiographical #because #false #how #know

Some Pulitzer winners - novelists - have confided to me that getting the prize screwed them up. It messed with their heads. That hasn't been my experience. ↗

— Jeffrey Eugenides

#confided #experience #getting #hasn #heads

It's like a novelist writing far out things. If it makes a point and makes sense, then people like to read that. But if it's off in left field and goes over the edge, you lose it. The same with musical talent, I think. ↗

— Johnny Cash

#far #field #goes #i #i think

It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader. ↗

— Elizabeth George

#novelist #reader #touch

Being a novelist is hard for anyone - male or female. You don't get to quit your day job. ↗

— Jennifer Weiner

#being #day #female #get #hard

The novel should tell the truth, as I see the truth, or as the novelist persuades me to see it. And one more demand: I expect the novelist to aspire to improve the world. ... As a novelist, I want to be more than one more dog barking at the other dogs barking at me. Not out of any foolish hope that one novelist, or all virtuous novelists in chorus, can make much of a difference for good, except in the long run, but out of the need to prevent the human world from relaxing into something worse. To maintain the tension between truth and falsity, beauty and ugliness, good and evil. ... I believe the highest duty of the serious novelist is, whatever the means or technique, to be a critic of his society, to hold society to its own ideals, or if these ideals are unworthy, to suggest better ideals. ↗

— Edward Abbey

#society #truth #beauty