Explore Quotes on Novelists

Novelist-Citizen of Two Countries Interpreter of his Generation on both Sides of the Sea.

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

Not everyone is capable of madness; and of those lucky enough to be capable, not many have the courage for it.

A mother's love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity, it dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.

Expansion, that is the idea the novelist must cling to, not completion, not rounding off, but opening out.

Humor is, I think, the subtlest and chanciest of literary forms. It is surely not accidental that there are a thousand novelists, essayists, poets or journalists for each humorist. It is a long, long time between James Thurbers.

Teaching has ruined more American novelists than drink.

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.

The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

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

I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.

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

Joy seems to me a step beyond happiness- happiness is a sort of atmosphere you can live in sometimes when you're lucky. Joy is a light that fills you with hope and faith and love.

All of us contain Music & Truth, but most of us can't get it out.

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

The novelist must look on humanity without partiality or prejudice. His sympathy, like that of the historian, must be unbounded, and untainted by sect or party.

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.

Snowflakes, leaves, humans, plants, raindrops, stars, molecules, microscopic entities all come in communities. The singular cannot in reality exist.