If a traditional publisher offered me a quarter of a million dollars for a novel, I’d consider it. But anything less than that, I’m sure I can do better on my own.

I’ve been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982.

At present, the novels which we owe to English ladies form no small part of the literary glory of our country. No class of works is more honorably distinguished for fine observation, by grace, by delicate wit, by pure moral feeling.

One of the notebooks was for musings and pep talks. … The other notebooks were for writing out the novel the way authors had done for centuries.

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

A novel is a map of the human heart, a guide to the depths of our emotions

The greatest novels are those that leave us with more questions than answers

A novel is a window into the human soul, a mirror in which we see ourselves reflected

A novel is a conversation between the writer and the reader, a meeting of minds across time and space

I just distributed my first novel at 40 years old. Till at that point, I composed short stories

If this were a novel, I’d stop reading right now. I’d throw it across the room.

A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.

I don’t know who said that novelists read the novels of others only to figure out how they are written. I believe it’s true. We aren’t satisfied with the secrets exposed on the surface of the page: we turn the book around to find the seams.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

The need for novelty is the characteristic of an alienated gorilla.

It was like a page torn from a history book, from some historical novel about the captivity of babylon or Spanish Inquisition.

When I want to read a novel, I write one.

I think my novel, ‘Walden Two,’ has made people stop and look at the culture they have inherited and wonder if it is the last word or whether it can be changed.

There are metaphysical problems, problems of human existence, that philosophy has never known how to grasp in all their concreteness and that only the novel can seize.

Doesn’t the art of the novel, with its feel for the relativity of human truths, require that the author’s opinion stay out of sight and that all thinking be left to the reader alone?

We all reject out of hand the idea that the love of our life may be something light or weightless; we presume our love is what must be, that without it our life would no longer be the same.

All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual.

The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.

The novel is the imaginary paradise of individuals.