E. M. Forster Quotes

I want prose fiction to be recognized as that, and I'm not interested in writing as it becomes more personal.

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

I am not Shakespeare or Hemingway, but I have written stories on tennis that were brilliant.

I've never been a true fan of the short story and have only published a single example of my own.

A short-story collection is harder to formulate pithy sentences about.

NOVEL, n. A short story padded.

I write novellas because I don't like loose sprawling prose.

I love 'Memory Keeper's Daughter,' but in some ways I think 'The Lake of Dreams' is a stronger book. I was able to tell the story I wanted to tell. That's all you can ever do as a writer. From there on you have no control over it.

When I tell people there are three stories in 'Thunderstruck' that were from the same wrecked novel, they want to guess what they are. Nobody has. There are no characters or timelines in common. They're structured very differently. A good novel wouldn't have pulled apart so easily.

When it comes to writers, I'm a huge fan of Ian McEwan. I've never taken a writing course, but reading and deconstructing his novels has been as good a lesson as any.

I am a better novelist than a poet, playwright, or essayist.

I'm no good at describing my books. 'Holes' has been out now for seven years, and I still can't come up with a good answer when asked what that book is about.

I'm not nearly smart enough or imaginative enough to tackle the novel form. Never happen.

There are things I read doing research, and there are certain books and writers I just love to read. There are books of Brian Morten's that I love, for instance. There's a wonderful book by an Australian writer named Helen Garner called 'The Children's Bach,' and I just love the way she uses language in it.

I guess I find the boundaries between poetry and prose to be somewhat permeable.

I liked teaching Henry James. When you look down at a Henry James novel from a helicopter height, you find an intricate spider web that all clings together.

People who attack biography choose as their models vulgar and offensive biography. You could equally attack novels or poems by choosing bad poems or novels.

I like the idea of trying to write a book in every genre.

Faulkner was the first novelist I read with pen and paper in hand because his technique stunned me.

Robert Bolt's storytelling is the kind that I grew up with and aspired to.

In my own work, when I start off writing a scene, I don't know which physical details are going to turn out to be meaningful. But, inevitably, certain images will stand out - you start to decide which ones are important as you go.

Books like Munro's are so deeply personal and idiosyncratic that it feels like a violation to subject them to the crude business of committee meetings and PR releases; you might as well storm a butterfly den with a klieg light.

A book makes claims of literary art.

It's really hard to be a story writer - no matter how much acclaim you get - and not write a novel.

If getting a contract was relatively straightforward, writing fiction was far harder than I could have imagined, and there were moments during the long and torturous edit process when it seemed that 'Zulu Hart,' the first of the trilogy, would never be fit for public consumption.