#novelist

The materials of the novelist must be real; they must be gathered from the field of humanity by his actual observation. ↗

— Goldwin Smith

#be real #field #gathered #his #humanity

The novelist must ground his work in faithful study of human nature. ↗

— Goldwin Smith

#ground #his #human #human nature #must

The novelist must look on humanity without partiality or prejudice. His sympathy, like that of the historian, must be unbounded, and untainted by sect or party. ↗

— Goldwin Smith

#historian #humanity #like #look #must

In Maurice I tried to create a character who was completely unlike myself or what I supposed myself to be: someone handsome, healthy, bodily attractive, mentally torpid, not a bad business man and rather a snob. Into this mixture I dropped an ingredient that puzzles him, wakes him up, torments him and finally saves him. ↗

— E.M. Forster

#glbtq #novelist #business

After I convinced them that I was a harmless novelist, I actually got them to give me a tour of the harem - which is usually off limits for tourists. ↗

— Dorothy Dunnett

#after #convinced #give #give me #got

A novelist can’t be without a kimono and pen!(Shigure) ↗

— Natsuki Takaya

#kimono #novelists #shigure #writers #humor

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

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

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

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

— Carly Fiorina

#i #memoir #novelist #only #well