Novelists are perhaps the last people in the world to be entrusted with opinions. The nature of a novel is that it has no opinions, only the dialectic of contrary views, some of which, all of which, may be untenable and even silly. A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although he may be permitted to be an intellectual.
—Anthony Burgess (1917–93) English Novelist, Critic, Composer
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
All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual.
—Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech-French Writer, Literary Philosopher
Only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.
—Jane Austen (1775–1817) English Novelist
You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference. You have the sheet of blank paper, the pencil, and the obligation to invent truer than things can be true. You have to take what is not palpable and make it completely palpable and also have it seem normal and so that it can become a part of experience of the person who reads it.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
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
Novels as dull as dishwater, with the grease of random sentiments floating on top.
—Italo Calvino (1923–85) Italian Novelist, Essayist, Journalist
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
Undermining experience, embellishing experience, rearranging and enlarging experience into a species of mythology.
—Philip Roth (1933–2018) American Novelist, Short-story Writer
The most influential books and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction.—They repeat, rearrange, and clarify the lessons of life, disengage us from ourselves, constrain us to the acquaintance of others, and show us the web of experience, but with a single change.—That monstrous, consuming ego of ours struck out.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) Scottish 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
The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.
—Henry James (1843–1916) American-born British Novelist, Writer
Man is a poetical animal and delights in fiction.
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
—Gore Vidal (1925–48) American Novelist, Essayist, Journalist, Playwright
The acceptance that all that is solid has melted into the air, that reality and morality are not givens but imperfect human constructs, is the point from which fiction begins.
—Salman Rushdie (b.1947) Indian-born British 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
Novels so often provide an anodyne and not an antidote, glide one into torpid slumbers instead of rousing one with a burning brand.
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.
—John Irving (b.1942) American Modern Novelist
When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him.
—Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) Italian Dramatist, Novelist, Short Story Writer
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
The time-honored bread-sauce of the happy ending.
—Henry James (1843–1916) American-born British Novelist, Writer
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
When I heard the word “stream” uttered with such a revolting primness, what I think of is urine and not the contemporary novel. And besides, it isn’t new, it is far from the dernier cri. Shakespeare used it continually, much too much in my opinion, and there’s Tristam Shandy, not to mention the Agamemnon.
—James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish Novelist, Poet
I have often maintained that fiction may be much more instructive than real history.
—John Foster Dulles (1888–1959) American Republican Public Official, Lawyer
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Novels are longer than life.
—Natalie Clifford Barney (1876–1972) American Playwright, Poet, Novelist
Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible.
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
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
There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there’s only narrative.
—E. L. Doctorow (1931–2015) American Novelist, Editor, Professor
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
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