#novelist

Many novelists take well-defined, precise characters, whose stories are sometimes of mediocre interest, and place them in an important historical context, which remains secondary in spite of everything. ↗

— Raymond Queneau

#context #everything #historical #important #interest

Being a novelist and being a mother have exactly coincided in my life: the call from my agent saying that I had a contract for my first novel - that was on my answering phone message when I got back from the hospital with my first child. ↗

— Barbara Kingsolver

#answering #back #being #call #child

Miss Austen had shown the infinite possibilities of ordinary and present things for the novelist. ↗

— George Saintsbury

#had #infinite #miss #novelist #ordinary

In effect I am not a novelist, but rather a failed essayist who started to write novels because he didn't know how to write essays. ↗

— Jose Saramago

#because #effect #essayist #essays #failed

Novelists have always had complete freedom to pretty much tell their story any way they saw fit. And that's what I'm trying to do. ↗

— Quentin Tarantino

#any #complete #complete freedom #fit #freedom

You say that you hope I will be recognized as the best novelist of my generation. I want you to know now and know completely that that would mean to me absolutely nothing. ↗

— Jean Stafford

#absolutely nothing #best #completely #generation #hope

You sound so miserable.” “All novelists are. ↗

— Changdictator

#novelist #sad #love

A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished. Marathoners have to carefully pace themselves so that they don't run out of energy (or in the case of the novelist-- ideas) because they have so far to run. To mix the metaphor, writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage. ↗

— Jonathan Carroll

#novels #short-fiction #short-stories #writing #writing-process

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 not a biographer, I'm a novelist. ↗

— Barry Unsworth

#i #novelist