Saul Bellow Quotes

Novels are such mysterious and amorphous and tender things.

A good novel is a good novel, pointe finale. And I think what I'm writing is exactly that.

Novels will remain my meat and potatoes, what sustain me imaginatively.

Novels aren't pedagogical instruments, or instructions in law or physics or any other discipline. A novel has to be an emotional experience, a trip of the imagination, and because science has raised so many issues that concern and affect humans, it's a good starting place for me.

Fiction is socially meaningful.

It is as true for the writer as for the reader that any novel worth its ink should be an experience first and foremost - not an essay, not a statement, not an orderly rollout of themes and propositions.

Fiction is the thing I esteem most in my own work; I feel that, even if it's no good, only I could have written those books.

Obviously any fiction is going to be a combination of what is invented, what is overheard, what is experienced, what is experienced by people close to you, what you are told, what you have read, all mixed together into this kind of soup which, like any good soup, at the end you cannot really distinguish the ingredients.

Contrary to all those times you've heard a writer confess at a reading that he writes fiction because he is a pathological liar, fiction writing is all about telling the truth.

I feel like my brain is more geared towards a novel than it is to a movie.

I don't care whether the story is real or fantastical. I tell the story that needs to be told.

To tell a good story and to illuminate the world: the two things are completely linked. That is the point. That is what I've always wanted to do.

I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.

When I give myself over to a good novel, I surrender to the truths fashioned from one writer's heart, mind and soul. I do not waste a nanosecond wondering whether what I'm reading 'really happened.'

I'm a storyteller, not a prophet. I'm just interested in a good story.

Fiction is very important to me. It's what I do, it's what I do with my life.

Everyone seems quite good at stories and making them up.

A good novel doesn't just transcend the boundaries of its target market - it knows nothing about target markets.

I've tried to tell a story. For me, it is the best one.

I know it may sound silly, but I think my short stories have a life and identity of their own. They crop up in all sorts of places.

My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea.

I enjoy receiving and giving realistic fiction, for both children and adults, with strong characters, beautiful language, and humane visions.

Fiction is about telling a good story, first and foremost. But of course, everything I'm interested in or angry about leaks into my writing, from art to violence against women.

I've written fiction for as long as I can remember; it's always been my preferred form of play.