#novelist

The only time I've ever learned anything from a review was when John Lanchester wrote a piece in the Guardian about my second novel, The Heather Blazing. He said that, together with the previous novel, it represented a diptych about the aftermath of Irish independence. I simply hadn't known that – and I loved the grandeur of the word "diptych". I went around quite snooty for a few days, thinking: "I wrote a diptych." [Colm Tóibín, Novelist – Portrait of the Artist, The Guardian, 19 February 2013] ↗

— Colm Tóibín

#conceit #critique #diptychs #grandeur #novelists

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#dramatist #morality #novelist #poet #wild

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

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

— Barry Unsworth

#i #novelist

Things that appear on the front page of the newspaper as 'fact' are far more dangerous than the games played by a novelist, and can lead to wars. ↗

— E. L. Doctorow

#dangerous #fact #far #front #games

Well I'm not a novelist. I've only written one book and that is a memoir. ↗

— Carly Fiorina

#i #memoir #novelist #only #well

We all now tell stories by cutting from one dramatic scene to the next, whereas Victorian novelists felt free to write long passages of undramatic summary. ↗

— Ken Follett

#dramatic #felt #free #long #next

A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction. ↗

— Graham Greene

#fiction #journalists #keep #more #more and more

With the marketing pressures driving the book world today, it's much easier to get the author of a memoir on a television show than a serious novelist. ↗

— David Halberstam

#book #driving #easier #get #marketing