20 Famous quotations of famous novelists to live by

" There are quotations which reflect the writer and his story, immortalizing famous novels in the like of "the singer and the song."  

Selected and compiled 

By Dr Abe V Rotor 

A novel is long story (which differentiates it from short story). It is a narrative fiction normally in prose and published as a book. The novel has about two thousand years of history, originating from classical Greece and Rome. The versatility of media today has transformed  reading the novel to viewing it on the screen.  With TV and the computer one can enjoy his favorite novel in the living room - or anywhere with his iPhone - at his convenience. This "shortcut" loses much of the essence, including the theme and message of the story. The beauty and power of words are also underestimated, save certain quotations that reflect the story and the writer, immortalizing famous novels in the like of "the singer and the song."    

"Only a mediocre person is always at his best." Somerset Maugham 

Dr Jose Rizal is author of the Philippine most famous novels Noli Me Tangera and El Filibusterismo 

"The victor belongs   to the spoils." F. Scott Fitzgerald  

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.
– Ernest Hemingway

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

– Herman Melville 

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.
– Henry David Thoreau

Poetry creates the myth, the prose writer draws its portrait.
– Jean-Paul Sartre

The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.”
-Leo Tolstoy

People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good.
– William Faulkner

It is the writer who might catch the imagination of young people, and plant a seed that will flower and come to fruition.

– Isaac Asimov

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.

– William Faulkner

Begin with an individual, and before you know it you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find you have created – nothing.

– F. Scot Fitzgerald

A wounded deer leaps the highest.

– Emily Dickinson

Only in men’s imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

– Joseph Conrad

Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.
– Edgar Rice Burroughs

Anecdotes don’t make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.
– Alice Munro

Words are a lens to focus one’s mind.
– Ayn Rand

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.
– Anton Chekhov

I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.

– Stephen King.