[T]he success of every novel -- if it's a novel of action -- depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, "What are my big scenes?" and then get every drop of juice out of them.",...
Novels for me are how I find out what's going on in my own head. And so that's a really useful and indeed critical thing to do when you do as many of these other things as I do.
The English novels are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed. But one should not be too severe on them. They show a want of knowledge that must be the result of years of study.
Ambition is putting a ladder against the sky.
When you write, you write out of your best self. Everything else drops away.
He thought of trying to explain something he had recently noticed about himself: that if anyone insulted him, or one of his friends, he didn't really mind--or not much, anyway. Whereas if anyone insul...
We read novels because we want to see the world through other experiences, other beings, other eyes, other cultures.
Thank God For Writing, As Now I Can Work Until My Last Breath!
What you keep alive is what you truly care about, no matter how many times you die in the process.
I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.
Novels are forged in passion, demand fidelity and commitment, often drive you to boredom or rage, sleep with you at night.
Writers of novels live in a strange world where what's made up is as important as what's real.
I am certain that a novelist is someone who attributes a different reality-value to the characters and events of his story than to those of 'real' life. A novelist is someone who confuses his own life...
Novelists are basically inviting their readers to play a game of pretend. That's what fiction is: a game of pretend.
My spirit has been around far longer than my soul--I've lived several lifetimes already. And one this novel has been written, I will have lived several more.
All of fiction is truthful. What you create is your own truth and no one can take that away or change it.
Faction is that hybrid of documented fact and novelistic elaboration.
If the shining sun blinds the eye,it makes sense. But to be blinded by gold and silver!
There's a magic to letting a story and its people unfold with witchcraft and late nights and walks in the woods. You don't lead a story. You follow it.
It's easy to want to be an author. You see it in your mind with sun streaming through windows and a Siamese cat purring on an antique rug and a little pellet stove and somehow the bills are paid and t...
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