Leslie Fiedler Quotes

I do think novels are overlooked. I did write one some years ago that I think is quite good, called 'The End of the Story,' not to blow my own horn.

We've been hearing about the death of the novel ever since the day after Don Quixote was published.

The novel has always been the form that incorporates other forms. For me, it has always been the ultimate medium.

For after my marriage I had made various attempts to write fiction. They were clearly failures.

The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.

It's hard to do fiction and nonfiction simultaneously.

The writer of stories or of novels settles on men and imitates them; he exhausts the possibilities of his characters.

I think the short story is a very underrated art form. We know that novels deserve respect.

I resist when someone calls me a novelist: it implies some kind of inherent superiority of the novel. I'm not a novelist, I'm a writer.

I think my fascination is less with genre figures than with writers in general.

Since I grew up, I have never deliberately used any technique at all other than the physical shaping of my tale so that it more or less resembles what has been thought of as a novel for these last two hundred years.

There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.

While writing a novel, I don't read anything new in fiction. I am too engrossed.

While growing up, I always had to depend on foreign authors for page-turners. I think of myself as a commercial writer, and my job is simple to entertain you.

English writing tends to fall into two categories - the big, baggy epic novel or the fairly controlled, tidy novel. For a long time, I was a fan of the big, baggy novel, but there's definitely an advantage to having a little bit more control.

In terms of fiction, I'd rather go out and have a good time than read a book about someone having a good or bad time.

Historians tell the story of the past, novelists the story of the present.

I want to write a book of poetry, as well as children's stories.

It means that no matter what you write, be it a biography, an autobiography, a detective novel, or a conversation on the street, it all becomes fiction as soon as you write it down.

I certainly grew up seeing more movies and television than I read books, but when it came time to do the thing itself you don't have to hire a lot of people to sit down and write a book, so that was the story-telling medium that was available to me.

All of my novels are seeded in real life events, and 'The Wreckage' is no different.

The importance and influence of books on me has been cumulative: the result of hearing and reading lots of stories about interesting people and places.

I have often heard that the novel is dead. But I see novels produced, I don't know how many a week, in France. I have the impression it's carrying along quite well.

Fiction and nonfiction, for me, involve very different processes.

I write contemporary fiction, and that is what my readers want to read.