Novelist As A Vocation Quotes
"For a long time I’ve been wanting to say something about my writing novels, and being a novelist for so long; so in between other work I started, bit by bit, jotting down my thoughts, and organizing them by topic."
"The only way I can think about things in any kind of order is by putting them in writing. Physically moving my hand as I write, rereading what I write, over and over, and closely reworking it—only then am I finally able to gather my thoughts and grasp them like other people do."
"Words have power. Yet that power must be rooted in truth and justice. Words must never stand apart from those principles."
"Life might have been hectic and things might have been rough, but the joy I took in books and music never wavered. That, at least, was something no one could take from me."
"In short, the world of the novelist is like a professional wrestling ring that welcomes anyone who feels like taking a crack at it."
"Writing novels is, to my way of thinking, basically a very uncool enterprise. I see hardly anything chic or stylish about it. Novelists sit cloistered in their rooms, intently fiddling with words, batting around one possibility after another."
"Yet the novelist will claim that truth and reality are entrenched in precisely such unnecessary, roundabout places. I know it may sound pretentious, but it is in this belief that the novelist plies his craft."
"A novelist, however, sees the idea of 'a leisurely life' as practically synonymous with 'the waning of one’s creativity.' For novelists are like certain types of fish. If they don’t keep swimming forward, they die."
"Give up trying to create something sophisticated," I told myself. "Why not forget all those prescriptive ideas about ‘the novel’ and ‘literature’ and set down your feelings and thoughts as they come to you, freely, in a way that you like?"
"To make a fresh start, the first thing I had to do was ditch my stack of manuscript paper and my fountain pen."
"Ultimately, I learned that there was no need for a lot of difficult words—I didn’t have to try to impress people with beautiful turns of phrase."
"Now I get it," I thought. "This is how I should be doing it."
"It was a moment of true clarity, when the scales fell from my eyes."
"Writing in my new style felt more like performing music than composing literature."
"What’s the point of writing, anyway, if you’re not enjoying it?"
"I can’t get my head around the idea of ‘the suffering writer.’"
"Literary quality is inherently formless, so prizes, medals, and such provide that concreteness."
"As long as book lovers keep on reading books, I’m happy."
"It is literary works that last, not literary prizes."
"Originality is a living, evolving thing, whose shape is devilishly hard to pin down."
"When an artist with a unique style grabs the eyes or ears of the public and then vanishes from sight or grows tiresome, it's hard to call them 'original.'"
"Before we can say much about an artist’s style, we need to see an accumulated body of work."
"My sole task is to work as hard as I can to provide as many 'cases' as possible."
"Better to evoke a strong response, even a negative one, than to elicit nothing but humdrum comments and lukewarm praise."
"To reach the source, you have to swim against the current. Only trash swims downstream."
"It is my belief that a rich, spontaneous joy lies at the root of all creative expression."
"What is originality, after all, but the shape that results from the natural impulse to communicate to others that feeling of freedom, that unconstrained joy?"
"The world may appear a mundane place, but in fact it is filled with a variety of enigmatic and mysterious ores."
"If you are blessed with a pair of good eyes, you too can mine the ore you choose to your heart’s content!"
"Short stories are agile vehicles that can be maneuvered to cover the smaller topics that novels can’t handle very well."
"If I am in the mood, I can turn one out in a few days in a single spontaneous flow."
"Nothing can surpass the fullness I experience then."
"This formula, if it can be called that, pushes me to establish a fixed routine within my life and work—then and only then does writing a full-length novel become possible."
"I write my ten pages the same way. Cool and detached. 'Without hope and without despair' says it perfectly."
"But it takes time to reach this point. And until then you have to be very patient."
"There must also be a balance between the novel as a whole and its parts."
"Every day, without exception, I repeat this cycle."
"The quality of the time spent doing these things will manifest itself in the persuasiveness of the completed work."
"As the author, it’s hardly my place to voice an opinion. Readers have to decide for themselves."
"From the midst of that subterranean darkness the novelist finds what he needs—the nourishment needed for the novel, in other words—and returns with it to the upper regions of consciousness."
"What’s needed above all to stand up to that deep darkness, and confront daily the various dangers inherent there, is physical strength."
"This mental toughness I’m talking about isn’t actual toughness on the level of daily life."
"Still, when it comes to writing novels, I’m able to maintain the mental toughness needed to sit at a desk for five hours each and every day."
"I’m not advocating becoming moralistic or stoic."
"Even if I had some inborn talent for writing novels, it would have remained there, undisturbed, deep underground."
"Life is often capricious, unfair, and sometimes cruel."
"And if you want to sustain that willpower over the long haul, then your quality of life becomes an issue."
"Physical strength and spiritual strength are like the two pairs of wheels of a car."
"If you’re not like them, however, if you’re not a rare genius, and you wish to, gradually, over time, raise the level of the (more or less limited) talent you do have, and make it into something powerful, I believe my theory might be of some value."
"In every age, in every society, imagination plays a crucial role."
"What I hope for from schools is simply that they do not suppress the imagination of children who are naturally imaginative."
"In my life, this has been one of the biggest rewards of reading."
"In other words, I wasn’t gazing at the world just from the spot where I was standing, but was able to take a step back and take a more panoramic view."
"I know you’ll laugh to hear me say this, but when it comes to the process of creating characters it’s like those Automatic Dwarves living in my unconscious are, despite a bit of grumbling, somehow managing to work hard."
"In any case, in the same way that you have to read a lot of books in order to write novels, to write about people you need to know a lot of them."
"There are all sorts of different people, doing all sorts of different actions, and it’s through that clash of difference that things get moving and the story is propelled forward."
"One of the things I most enjoy about writing novels is the sense that I can become anybody I want to be."
"By using third person, increasing the number of characters, and giving them names, the possibilities for my novels expanded."
"What I want to say is that in a certain sense, while the novelist is creating a novel, he is simultaneously being created by the novel as well."
"It’s the unpleasant memories that remain, the ones I don’t want to remember. Perhaps there’s more to learn from them."
"Enjoying yourself doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll produce an outstanding work of art. A process of rigorous self-examination is a crucial element."
"The world’s population is about half men and half women, so it’s a natural and healthy thing for my readers to be evenly split as well."
"As I write a story, I try very hard to put myself inside the characters, and gradually I might get a sense of what they’re feeling or thinking."
"I have always believed that novels, and stories, function to allay and blunt the sharp edges of all kinds of stereotypical sources of friction."
"I’ve been blessed with readers... They don’t just say, finishing the book, 'That was interesting' and toss it aside and forget about it; the majority of them ask themselves why they found it interesting, and go on to consider it all over again."
"It’s critical to find a translator who understands you, because even with an outstanding translator, if he isn’t on the same wavelength as the text or the author, you can’t expect any good results."
"Being content with where you are and staying in one place means your creative urge will atrophy and eventually be lost."
"It’s important for those who deal with creativity to always want to push forward into new frontiers."
"No matter how old you are, no matter where you live, it's a wonderful thing to have a goal like this for yourself."