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4391 Novelist Quotes

If I were a writer, how I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature. Lovely.

Being Central Dead Enjoy
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Men with secrets tend to be drawn to each other, not because they want to share what they know but because they need the company of the like-minded, the fellow afflicted.

Afflicted Because Company Drawn
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Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns how to know it when he finally gets there.

End Every Finally Gets
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For me, writing is a concentrated form of thinking.

Concentrated Form Thinking Writing
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What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy.

Destroy Easily Make Power
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I embarked on my life - I didn't do anything. I don't have an explanation.

Anything Embarked Explanation Life
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What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.

Artist Distinguishes First Great
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It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it.

Book Easy Just Offended
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Our lives teach us who we are.
Lives Our Teach Us
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I hate admitting that my enemies have a point.

Admitting Enemies Hate Point
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A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.

Book Ignore Like Offer
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I quit my job just to quit. I didn't quit my job to write fiction. I just didn't want to work anymore.

Anymore Fiction Job Just
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Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence.

Absence Life Matters Most
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Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.

Author Find Get Go
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I saw a photograph of a wedding conducted by Reverend Moon of the Unification Church. I wanted to understand this event, and the only way to understand it was to write about it.

Church Event Moon Photograph
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Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

Ball Free Game Itself
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I do not need the idea of God to explain the world I live in.

Explain God Idea Live
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When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy.

Action Becomes Excess Finest
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Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts.

Become Facts Legends Make
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What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.

Ceases Exist Expression Freedom
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Our lives are not what we deserve; they are, let us agree, in many ways deficient.

Agree Deficient Deserve Lives
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If I were asked for a one-sentence sound bite on religion, I would say I was against it.

Against Asked Bite Religion
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One of the extraordinary things about human events is that the unthinkable becomes thinkable.

About Becomes Events Extraordinary
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In this world without quiet corners, there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, from terrible, unquiet fuss.

Corners Easy Escapes Fuss
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Rock and roll music - the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative defense mechanisms.

Conservative Defense Freedom Frighten
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Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory.

Both Fight Groups Images
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Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.
Act Authors Books Choose
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Doubt, it seems to me, is the central condition of a human being in the twentieth century.

Being Central Century Condition
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Such is the miraculous nature of the future of exiles: what is first uttered in the impotence of an overheated apartment becomes the fate of nations.

Apartment Becomes Fate First
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There is a widespread difficulty in the Muslim world, which has to do with how the people are taught about examining their own history. A whole range of stuff has been placed off limits.

About Been Difficulty Examining
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If you actually want to change your world, there is a better way of doing it than blowing yourself up.

Actually Better Blowing Change
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I don't like books that play to the gallery, but I've become more concerned with telling a story as clearly and engagingly as I can.

Become Books Clearly Concerned
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I've never seen anywhere in the world as beautiful as Kashmir. It has something to do with the fact that the valley is very small and the mountains are very big, so you have this miniature countryside surrounded by the Himalayas, and it's just spectacular. And it's true, the people are very beautiful too.

Anywhere Beautiful Big Countryside
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I slept for four years. I didn't study much of anything. I majored in something called communication arts.

Arts Communication Four Much
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I think a playwright realizes after he finishes working on the script that this is only the beginning. What will happen when it moves into three dimensions?

Beginning Dimensions Finishes Happen
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I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism.

Abstract Been European Expressionism
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It's so disappointing, to put it mildly, that people know so much about my life. Because it means that they're always trying to look at my books in terms of my life.

About Always Because Books
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I think there is a sense of last things in my work that probably comes from a Catholic childhood.

Catholic Childhood Last Sense
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When you write, you write out of your best self. Everything else drops away.
Away Best Drops Else
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I've always liked being relatively obscure. I feel that's where I belong, that's where my work belongs.

Always Work Being Belong
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I've always seen myself in sentences. I begin to recognize myself, word by word, as I work through a sentence.

Always Begin Myself Recognize
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The only way of living in a free society is to feel that you have the right to say and do stuff.

Feel Free Living Only
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The only way to find out why someone decides to engage in armed combat is to look at their individual personality.

Armed Combat Decide Engage
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I've never had very high regard for therapists. I owe my health, my mental survival, to my friends and loved ones.

Friends Had Health High
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Writers shouldn't have lives that are interesting. It gets in the way of your work.

Gets Interesting Lives Way
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The world is a very abnormal place.

Abnormal Place Very World
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In a repressive society, a writer can be deeply influential, but in a society that's filled with glut and repetition and endless consumption, the act of terror may be the only meaningful act.

Act Consumption Deeply Endless
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In the face of technology, everything becomes a little atavistic.
Becomes Everything Face Little
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I've never rejected the world I came from. To be rejected by it is horrible.

Came Horrible Never Rejected
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It's no accident that my first novel was called Americana. This was a private declaration of independence, a statement of my intention to use the whole picture, the whole culture.

Accident Americana Culture Declaration
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