It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader.
Society is the stage on which manners are shown; novels are the literature. Novels are the journal or record of manners; and the new importance of these books derives from the fact, that the novelist begins to penetrate the surface, and treat this part of life more worthily.
I believe, in a funny way, the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for an experience that has not really been spoken for.
I always think the novelist should go to the culture's dark places and poke around. Pose a lot of hard questions.
The function of the novelist... is to comment upon life as he sees it.
My role as a novelist is to explore ideas and imagination, and hopefully that will inspire people from my world to continue dreaming and to believe in dreams.
Being called a 'bad citizen' is a compliment to a novelist, at least to my mind. That's exactly what we ought to do.
Mr. Franzen said he and Mr. Wallace, over years of letters and conversations about the ethical role of the novelist, had come to the joint conclusion that the purpose of writing fiction was “a way out of loneliness.” (NY Times article on the memorial service of David Foster Wallace.)
I am worrying about my country. I feel I have a responsibility as a novelist to do something.
The business of a novelist is, in my opinion, to create characters first and foremost, and then to set them in the snarl of the human currents of his time, so that there results an accurate permanent record of a phase of history.
The novelist works neither to correct nor to condone, not at all to comfort, but to make what's told alive.
I feel the responsibility of the novelist is to create a very complex world populated by very complex individuals and to deepen that as much as possible. I don't think the responsibility of the reporter or journalist is fundamentally different.
