…Cody is furiously explaining to his little son Tim ‘Never let the right hand know what your left hand is doing’…Page 100.

I gain nothing but pleasure from writing fiction; short stories are foreplay, novellas are heavy petting – but novels are the full monte. Frankly, if I didn’t enjoy writing novels I wouldn’t do it –...

This was what I came to found. The conquest of loneliness was the missing link that was one day going to make a decent novelist out of me. If you are out here and cannot...

I know you would be watching over me all through this journey called life… whenever I look next to me, I feel like you arehere… and a part of you is within me in the...

An authors publication date never matters, a book not read yet will always be New”…

Writers possess magic. It’s in their words. They compose phrases as powerful as incantations, creating illusions in the minds of readers. These spells make eyes envision things that aren’t real; they make hearts feel things...

I spend a lot of time imagining things – in fact, you could say that imagining things is my job.

Sometimes you can write about a character’s day in under a minute and sometimes it takes a day just to write about a minute.

Fiction is overrated, Fly. We’ve discussed this. In the time it takes those novelist fuckers to contemplate a few poetic passages, a thousand kids die from malnutrition. Immediacy, man, that’s what counts.

A friend worth knowing tolerates your flaws while a friend worth keeping loves you in spite of them.

Love is something that is beyond us. We can’t anticipate love. When, where and with whom we fall in love is coincidental and wonderful for the same reason.

The novelist is more like a pregnant woman who delivers her own child unaided. A messy procedure, with lots of groaning.

I bleed words.I dream in narrative. I live in infinite worlds.I befriend figmental characters.I wish on stars in other galaxies.I harvest stories from a brooding muse.I bloom under moonlight in hushed seclusion.I am a writer.

On Twitter, people who had read my book followed me and I could see what else they were reading, why they’d liked what I’d written and by the by, more about them than I’d ever...

No matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist.

Being a novelist is not the sort of thing we can shut off. It infests every bit of us until we lose the boundary between Person and Writer, like one of those color charts where...

Sometimes I don’t even know why I’m writing what I’m writing…I’m just following these people around and taking notes.

Life is full of beautiful moments. Live your life to the fullest. And do what youlove.

On every page, confidence fights with self-doubt. Every sentence is an act of faith. Why would anybody want to do it?

On my website there’s a quote from the writer Anthony Burgess: “The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world...

For a novelist, the gaps in a story are as intriguing as material that still exists.

Not writing is never an option. This is not words of advice. It’s just literally never an option!

A warm sunny evening, the plash and gurgle of the waves in the rock pools, the rush of the cold gin. I thought for the first time of my novel, abandoned, all these years, and...

Çünkü bana göre siyaset, en sonunda bizim gibi olmayanları kararlılıkla anlamama, romancılık ise anlama işidir.

I guess it’s true: it’s difficult for men to understand women.

The novel should tell the truth, as I see the truth, or as the novelist persuades me to see it. And one more demand: I expect the novelist to aspire to improve the world. …...

Every exceptional writer holds a Master of Arts in Daydreaming.

Edinburgh is a comfortable puddle for a novelist.

There is no friend as loyal as a book.

The Adventure called and I followed with my thumb like a character being written by an intractable author. Which, of course, I was.

At the heart of the novelist’s craft lies an optimism which thinks that the knowledge we gather from our everyday experience, if given proper form, can become valuable knowledge about reality.

Freud was just a novelist.

It is not so much as to say that something has occured; but to describe the very essence of the occurance. One must take hold of his readers and pull them into his world…the world...

The pleasures of being a novelist are many. But the greatest by far is the manner in which I live through my characters; experiencing every detail of their story as it unfolds gradually and personally...

I remember calling the council’s cemetery department to ask about body decomposition in different soil types. Once they had verified that I was a novelist and not a sicko, they were extremely helpful.

The job of the novelist is to invent: to embroider, to color, to embellish, to make things up.

I am, as it were, the created creating—a paradox, for all its rhetorical trappings, at the beating heart of our shared human journey, and one I invite you to struggle with just as I have...

A novelist is essentially a person who covers distance through his patience, slowly, like an ant. A novelist impresses us not by his demonic and romantic vision, but by his patience.

The real novelist, the perfectly simple human being, could go on, indefinitely imaging.

A deed done to others, but for yourself is not a worthy one at all. Instead, place another before you; in this way, you can be sure your moral compass always points North.

There are days when writing is within my power and a story unfolds along a course I’ve already chosen. And then there are days when the words breathe on their own and take me by the...

I realised early on that being an author is a hugely misunderstood job.

Try everything; listen to everyone. Follow no one. You are your own story guru!

Mathias shrugged. After all, a criminal lawyer is not concerned with facts. He is concerned with probabilities. It is the novelist who is concerned with facts, whose job it is to say what a particular...

The difference between a novelist and someone who tinkers around with writing is this: novelists finish their books.

I was asked the other day in which era I would choose to live. As a historical novelist, it comes up sometimes. As a woman I’d have to say I’d like to live in the...

Part of the desire to see each other succeed is to stop putting a price on success.

Who is better off? The one who writes to revel in the voluptuousness of the life that surrounds them? Or the one who writes to escape the tediousness of that which awaits them outside? Whose...

As a historical novelist, there are few jobs more retrospective.

With the right tools, you can write anything …