I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.

A novelist’s characters must be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them.

If your not annoying somebody, you’re not alive.

I’m a novelist by trade and my job is to write a story rather than reconstruct actual events.

Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.

Rich will be my life if I can keep my memories full and brimming, and record them on clear-eyed mornings while I set joyously to work setting pen to holy craft.

As a historical novelist, there is very little I like more than spending time sorting through boxes of old letters, diaries, maps, trinkets, and baubles.

You write once and you can call yourself a writer, but it takes three novels before you can call yourself a novelist. The first two could have just been lucky. One day, I will finish...

The moment I close my eyes, I see you and sleep vanishes. I’m awake the entire night, revisiting ourmemories together. The night seems to stretch on forever.

All novelists are.

I am not much of a researcher as a novelist; I write mainly from experience.

People make interesting assumptions about the profession. The writer is a mysterious figure, wandering lonely as a cloud, fired by inspiration, or perhaps a cocktail or two.

If you hear voices, you’re a lunatic. If you write down what they say, you’re an author.

I was forced to wander, having no one, forced by my nature to keep wandering because wandering was the only thing that I believed in, and the only thing that believed in me.

A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished. Marathoners have to carefully pace themselves so that they don’t...

Why are you behaving like this? You know how much I love you … and Ibelieve you love me as much, so why are you avoiding me?

It is possible to be a great novelist – that is, to render a veracious account of your times – and a bad writer – that is, an incompetent practitioner of applied linguistics.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

As a novelist it is my job to tell stories that inspire and entertain but I am increasingly mindful that many of these historical tales (which of themselves are fascinating) relate directly to our issues...

The lady who works in the grocery store at the corner of my block is called Denise, and she’s one of America’s great unpublished novelists. Over the years she’s written forty-two romantic novels, none of...

Passionate attraction to someone of the opposite sex will make a hero or a fool of a novelist each time.

George Eliot was the blend of four: the intellectual, psychologist, moralist and realist. In her novels, especially in Adam Bede, she used her intellect to explain the psyche of human beings and out of her...

I love you so much. Our love is eternal.

Film and novel characters are often stereotyped, but racial stereotyping in many novels or films creates & encourages labelling, discrimination & racism. ~Angelica Hopes

You do not learn how to write novels in a writing program. You learn how by leading an interesting life. Open yourself up to all experience. Let life pour through you the way light pours...

I’m a professional writer and I consider it part of my job to publicise my work and these days part of that job is done online.