Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes

The only thing that's authentic about what a writer writes is his work.

When I start writing these novels, I go into them with a spirit of inquiry rather than to substantiate prejudices I had in the beginning. If you don't do that, you can't write good characters.

I don't write political plays in the sense that I'm writing essays that are kind of disguised as plays. I would really defy anyone to watch any of my plays and say 'Well, here's the point.'

If a theme or idea is too near the surface, the novel becomes simply a tract illustrating an idea.

It's important, I think, for a writer of fiction to maintain an awareness of the pace and shape of the book as he's writing it. That is, he should be making an object, not chattering.

I write what I write.

Although a novel takes place in the larger world, there's always some drive in it that is entirely personal - even if you don't know it while you're doing it.

I don't really think in terms of making something that is going to be bought everywhere, because I don't read those things. My writing is a process in which I try my best to make good sentences and a sequence of events that is compelling and believable.

I don't believe chance can play a role in my literature.

When I'm writing, I don't really have much other guide than, 'As a reader, how would I respond to this?'

You really have to be careful with the clues you lay into the film - if they're too heavy-handed, or you've pandered to a slightly stupider audience, then you've spoiled it for the people who are even slightly smart.

With any book, I try to find where the manner of the making of the book is appropriate to the matter of the subject.

Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.

Sometimes, like in 'Invisible Monsters,' I get too out of control, and instead of a plot point every chapter, I want a plot point in every sentence.

When one is the type of writer who cares about the meaning of the historically specific setting, the history itself is not something that I would call backdrop. It's not window dressing for a timeless relationship about love and betrayal. For me, the setting and the specific history are active co-agents with me in trying to form the novel.

You don't want to hit readers over the head like they're completely incapable of picking up on subtlety.

I intentionally approached each story in 'Killing and Dying' in a different way, and that includes the writing process.

I wanted to write a novel where the meaning is in the story and characters and the subliminal, in the shades and nuances. It's exciting to develop that as a writer.

A character takes shape in the act of writing. You start with something, and you add or subtract.

Everything in a novel has to be intentional, even the things that aren't.

Romances in general are calculated rather to fire the imagination, than to inform the judgment.

My attitudes aren't directed toward characters at all. I don't feel sympathetic toward some characters, unsympathetic toward others. I don't love some characters, feel contempt for others. They have attitudes; I don't.

I wasn't aware I'd write the novel when I wrote the New Yorker story either. And the narration of their construction in 10:04 is fiction, however flickering.

We must perpetually try to distinguish, however closely they get entwined by the subtle nature of the facts and by the secret importunity of our passions, those attitudes in a writer which we can honestly and confidently condemn as real evils, and those qualities in his writing which simply annoy and offend us as men of taste.

Every serious novel is, beyond its immediate thematic preoccupations, a discussion of the craft, a conquest of the form, a conflict with its difficulties and a pursuit of its felicities and beauty.