#novelists

Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry. ↗

— William Golding

#carpentry #daily #job #level #much

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

#novelists #writing #art

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

— Lisa See

#novelists #reading #storytellers #storytelling #writers

She'll be an excellent novelist: a monster of self-absorption. ↗

— Lan Samantha Chang

#self-absorbtion #change

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

When the future looks dark, do not panic, because future does not exist yet; by using your intelligence, you can always turn it to bright! ↗

— Mehmet Murat ildan

#intelligence

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