#novelist

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

I don't know who said that novelists read the novels of others only to figure out how they are written. I believe it's true. We aren't satisfied with the secrets exposed on the surface of the page: we turn the book around to find the seams. ↗

— Gabriel Garcia Marquez

#believe #book #exposed #figure #find

I was writing from the time I was 12 years old, but I originally wanted to be a novelist. ↗

— Christopher McQuarrie

#novelist #old #originally #time #wanted

It is not the first duty of the novelist to provide blueprints for insurrection, or uplifting tales of successful resistance for the benefit of the opposition. The naming of what is there is what is important. ↗

— Ian Mcewan

#blueprints #duty #first #important #insurrection

A couple years ago, the novelist Russell Banks told me he was reading the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. I asked why. He said, 'Because I've always wanted to and am tired of having my reading assigned.' I thought it was a marvelous declaration of independence. ↗

— Richard Russo

#always #am #ancient #asked #assigned

It's the duty of all novelists, all painters, all musicians, all people who try to make art move: to look for something they feel authentically, without paying attention to styles. ↗

— Nathalie Sarraute

#attention #duty #feel #look #make

A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although... he may be permitted to be an intellectual. ↗

— Anthony Burgess

#either #intellectual #intelligent #may #novelist

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

— Lan Samantha Chang

#self-absorbtion #change

It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader. ↗

— Elizabeth George

#novelist #reader #touch