Quotes on Novelists

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

Great books help you understand, and they help you feel understood.

No real gentleman will tell the naked truth in the presence of ladies.

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that. And living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on Earth.

Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.

Maybe this world is another planet's Hell.

Once you’ve accepted your flaws, no one can use them against you.

Wherever I am, if I've got a book with me, I have a place I can go and be happy

The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead.

The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and thus the novelists' discoveries, however old they may be, will never cease to astonish.

A novelist has two lives-- a reading and writing life, and a lived life. he or she cannot be understood at all apart from this.

Go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here.

You will learn a lot about yourself if you stretch in the direction of goodness, of bigness, of kindness, of forgiveness, of emotional bravery. Be a warrior for love.

A filmmaker has almost the same freedom as a novelist has when he buys himself some paper.

Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different.

Serenity comes from the ability to say “Yes” to existence. Courage comes from the ability to say “No” to the wrong choices made by others.

Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning.

I know I'm a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science.

If you love deeply, you're going to get hurt badly. But it's still worth it.

Since I became a novelist I have discovered that I am biased. Either I think a new novel is worse than mine and I don’t like it, or I suspect it is better than my novels and I don’t like it.

If this were fiction, could even the most brilliant novelist contrive to make credible so short a period in which pride had been subdued and prejudice overcome?