My political position springs from my being a novelist. In so far as I am concerned, politics and the novel are an indivisible case and I can categorically state that I became politically committed because I am a novelist, not the opposite.
You could use a moth like that as a symbol in a novel, but it was trite, wasn’t it? The old moth-to-the-flame image had been used and used again. It was the stuff of amateur poetry. And she, having so little experience crafting a story, would be th...
I'm not a biographer, I'm a novelist.
A novelist's job is almost to be a stupid as possible, except in the cunning moment when you need to structure something, when you need to be very intelligent indeed. The rest of the time, you need almost an empty mind, where you can let any image in...
I believe that all novels, ... deal with character, and that it is to express character – not to preach doctrines, sing songs, or celebrate the glories of the British Empire, that the form of the novel, so clumsy, verbose, and undramatic, so rich, ...
Freud was just a novelist.
Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist’s business is lying. The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will be like, and the Rand Corporation will tell you wh...
My temperament is not geared to that of a novelist.
Every 'Observer' writer wants to be a novelist.
Edinburgh is a comfortable puddle for a novelist.
Novelists and poets have existed side by side forever.
The novel is resilient, and so are novelists.
The historian records, but the novelist creates.
I wanted to be a novelist for so long.
Melville, by his own account, spent four months in the valley. He was well treated. He made friends with a girl called Fayaway, swam and boated with her, and except for his fear of being eaten was happy enough.
I thought I wanted to be a journalist or a novelist.
Faction is that hybrid of documented fact and novelistic elaboration.
To be a novelist, all I need is a pen and a piece of paper.
As a historical novelist, there are few jobs more retrospective.
The function of the novelist... is to comment upon life as he sees it.
I had thought of writing, actually, and that later on I'd be a novelist.
