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Julian Barnes Quote: 'I'm a novelist, so I can't ...'

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A straight writer can write a gay novel and not worry about it, and a gay novelist can write about straight people.
Edmund White
Taoism taught me to focus on the process and not to be attached to preconceived ideas of what I thought the outcome should be.
Jimmy Chin
Tags: Me Should Thought
Some people start with the lyrics first because they know what they want to talk about and they just write a whole bunch of lyrical ideas, but for me the music tells me what to talk about.
John Legend
Tags: Music People Me
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For years, I felt I was a novelist, but now I know I can write short fiction.


Jill McCorkle
Tags: Know Years Now
I hadn't ever felt any particular calling to be a novelist, and I clearly remember telling a friend of mine about six months before I started work on 'Elsewhere' that I would never write a novel.
Gabrielle Zevin
Tags: Work About Would
One's politics are part of one even when one is writing. But if I want to say anything about the state of civil society, I will write an essay. The responsibilities you feel as a novelist are literary ones, I think, not civic ones. And I think politicians are interesting to write about.
Thomas Mallon
To become a novelist, the most crucial thing one must do is read, read and read again - gradually you begin to think like a writer. Ideas are not found - they are shaped.
Avi
Tags: You Like Think
In effect I am not a novelist, but rather a failed essayist who started to write novels because he didn't know how to write essays.
Jose Saramago
Tags: Who Because Know
To me, an intellectual is a person who is primarily interested in ideas. What I am is an aesthete, a person who is primarily interested in beauty. That's why I write about art.
Terry Teachout
Tags: Beauty Me About
You don't run for public office unless you have a specific vision. You are driven by ideas and a vision.
Julie Nixon Eisenhower
Tags: You Public Run
My writing process often begins with a question. I write down ideas and let them stew for about a year. Then, when I sit down to write, I make a list of characters and try to see how they fit.
Cynthia Voigt
Tags: About Them Make
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No one touches me when I write my story, unless I hire you to or I allow you to.


Lemon Andersen
Tags: You Me Write
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Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.


Marie Curie
Tags: People About More
I spend a lot of time preparing. I think a lot about what I want to do. I have prep books, little notebooks in which I write everything down before a sitting. Otherwise I would forget my ideas.
Helmut Newton
Tags: Time About Think
Farber had a huge effect on me as a writer. I don't mean I write like him. Farber is, first of all, a great stylist, a great writer. Anyone can read Manny Farber's film criticism, whether that person is a novelist, a poet, another critic, a historian, and learn a lot about writing by reading him.
Greil Marcus
Tags: Great Me Like
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I have an ideas book at home with far more ideas than I will ever be able to write.


Jennifer Rowe
Tags: Home More Than
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I'm single because I move about so much that I can't really get attached.


Rory McCann
Tags: About Because Get
I've never been very attached to genre labels and never set out intentionally to write historic fiction. Besides, what you consider historic depends on how far back your memory extends.
Charles Frazier
Tags: You Out Very
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I have more ideas than I'll ever be able to write in five lifetimes.


Rick Riordan
Tags: More Than Ever
Like every novelist, I fantasise about film. Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write: they're casting, they're dressing the scene, they're working out where the energy of the scene is coming from, and they're also relying tremendously on the creative imagination of the reader.
John le Carre