#novelist

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

On my website there's a quote from the writer Anthony Burgess: "The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind." I've always found that inspiring because the written word, as an art form, is unlike any other: movies, TV, music, they're shared experiences, but books aren't like that. The relationship between a writer and a reader is utterly unique to those two individuals. The world that forms in your head as you read a book will be slightly different to that experienced by every other reader. Anywhere. Ever. Reading is very personal, a communication from one mind to another, something which can't be exactly copied, or replicated, or directly shared. If I read the work of, say, one of the great Victorian novelists, it's like a gift from the past, a momentary connection to another's thoughts. Their ideas are down on paper, to be picked up by me, over a century later. Writers can speak individually to readers across a year, or ten years, or a thousand. That's why I love books. ↗

— Simon Cheshire

#books #inspiration #inspirational #novel #novelist

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

I am a better novelist than a poet, playwright, or essayist. ↗

— Jose Saramago

#better #essayist #i #i am #novelist

On every page, confidence fights with self-doubt. Every sentence is an act of faith. Why would anybody want to do it? ↗

— David Morrell

#novelist #purpose #questions #writer #writing

A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past. ↗

— Vladimir Nabokov

#home #like #more #mortals #novelist

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