The first sentence of every novel should be: “Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human.” Meander if you want to get to town.
—Michael Ondaatje (b.1943) Canadian Poet, Novelist
The narrative impulse is always with us; we couldn’t imagine ourselves through a day without it.
—Robert K. Cooper (b.1957) American Author, Psychologist
I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories, the streets, the cathedrals of the imagination.
—Janet Frame (1924–2004) New Zealand Novelist, Short-Story Writer
Democritus plucked his eye out because he could not look at a woman without thinking of her as a woman. If he had read a few of our novels, he would have torn himself to pieces.
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American Poet
Educating a son I should allow him no fairy tales and only a very few novels. This is to prevent him from having 1. the sense of romantic solitude (if he is worth anything he will develop a proper and useful solitude) which identification with the hero gives. 2. cant ideas of right and wrong, absurd systems of honor and morality which never will he be able completely to get rid of, 3. the attainment of “ideals,” of a priori desires, of a priori emotions. He should amuse himself with fact only: he will then not learn that if the weak younger son do or do not the magical honorable thing he will win the princess with hair like flax.
—Lionel Trilling (1905–75) American Literary Critic
It’s with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Satirist, Short Story Writer
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
—Gore Vidal (1925–48) American Novelist, Essayist, Journalist, Playwright
The time-honored bread-sauce of the happy ending.
—Henry James (1843–1916) American-born British Novelist, Writer
Would you not like to try all sorts of lives—one is so very small—but that is the satisfaction of writing—one can impersonate so many people.
—Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand-born British Author
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 (1899–1977) Russian-born American Novelist
Fiction is no longer a mere amusement; but transcendent genius, accommodating itself to the character of the age, has seized upon this province of literature, and turned fiction from a toy into a mighty engine.
—William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) American Unitarian Theologian, Poet
There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there’s only narrative.
—E. L. Doctorow (1931–2015) American Novelist, Editor, Professor
All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual.
—Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech Novelist
The purpose of a work of fiction is to appeal to the lingering after-effects in the reader’s mind as differing from, say, the purpose of oratory or philosophy which respectively leave people in a fighting or thoughtful mood.
—Unknown
The best histories may sometimes be those in which a little of the exaggeration of fictitious narrative is judiciously employed.—Something is lost in accuracy, but much is gained in effect.—The fainter lines are neglected, but the great characteristic features are imprinted on the mind forever.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–59) English Historian, Essayist, Philanthropist
The final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define.
—E. M. Forster (1879–1970) English Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist
Fiction is not falsehood, as some seem to think;—It is rather the fanciful and dramatic grouping of real traits around imaginary scenes or characters.—It may give false views of men or things, or it may, in the hands of a master, more truthfully portray life than sober history itself.
—Tryon Edwards (1809–94) American Theologian, Author
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 (1911–93) English Novelist
But I hate things all fiction… there should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric—and pure invention is but the talent of a liar.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
Those who delight in the study of human nature, may improve in the knowledge of it, and in the profitable application of it by the perusal of the best selected fictions.
—Richard Whately (1787–1863) English Philosopher, Theologian
There is something else which has the power to awaken us to the truth. It is the works of writers of genius. They give us, in the guise of fiction, something equivalent to the actual density of the real, that density which life offers us every day but which we are unable to grasp because we are amusing ourselves with lies.
—Simone Weil (1909–1943) French Philosopher, Political Activist
By measuring individual human worth, the novelist reveals the full enormity of the State’s crime when it sets out to crush that individuality.
—Ian McEwan British Novelist, Short-Story Writer
The really great novel tends to be the exact negative of its author’s life.
—Andre Maurois (1885–1967) French Novelist, Biographer
I have often maintained that fiction may be much more instructive than real history.
—John Foster Dulles (1888–1959) American Republican Public Official, Lawyer
It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have.
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American Novelist
Novels as dull as dishwater, with the grease of random sentiments floating on top.
—Italo Calvino (1923–85) Italian Novelist, Essayist, Journalist
Romances I never read like those I have seen.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
The novel does not seek to establish a privileged language but it insists upon the freedom to portray and analyze the struggle between the different contestants for such privileges.
—Salman Rushdie (b.1947) Indian-born British Novelist
We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind—mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the instant translation of science and technology into popular imagery, the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the preempting of any free or original imaginative response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary for him to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer’s task is to invent the reality.
—J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) English Novelist, Short Story Writer
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