Novelist Quotes

I do not 'get' ideas; ideas get me.

Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.

Do not suppose, however, that I intend to urge a diet of classics on anybody. I have seen such diets at work. I have known people who have actually read all, or almost all, the guaranteed Hundred Best Books. God save us from reading nothing but the best.

A Librettist is a mere drudge in the world of opera.

A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

Students today are a pretty solemn lot. One of the really notable achievements of the twentieth century has been to make the young old before their time.

May I make a suggestion, hoping it is not an impertinence? Write it down: write down what you feel. It is sometimes a wonderful help in misery.

I see Canada as a country torn between a very northern, rather extraordinary, mystical spirit which it fears and its desire to present itself to the world as a Scotch banker.

Canada is not really a place where you are encouraged to have large spiritual adventures.

Only a fool expects to be happy all the time.

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.

Fanaticism is overcompensation for doubt.

The great book for you is the book that has the most to say to you at the moment when you are reading. I do not mean the book that is most instructive, but the book that feeds your spirit. And that depends on your age, your experience, your psychological and spiritual need.

Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.

Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.

Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.

Poets are people who can still see the world through the eyes of children.

Simple people have much to offer. We, too, in return, must give to them to the best of our abilities. We must, with all our heart, try to help them acquire what they truly deserve.

Mourning is not forbidden, you know.

I wish the world was run by women. Women who have given birth and know the value of their creation.

Writing is conscience, scruple, and the farming of our ancestors.

We cannot live, suffer or die for somebody else, for suffering is too precious to be shared.

We can only write well about our sins because it is too difficult to recall a virtuous act or even whether it was the result of good or evil motives.

To write is a humiliation.

The machine has had a pernicious effect upon virtue, pity, and love, and young men used to machines which induce inertia, and fear, are near impotent.

The bad poet is a toady mimicking nature.

The ancients understood the regulation of power better than the regulation of liberty.

The Americans have always been food, sex, and spirit revivalists.

So much of our lives is given over to the consideration of our imperfections that there is no time to improve our imaginary virtues. The truth is we only perfect our vices, and man is a worse creature when he dies than he was when he was born.