Literature Quotes

"I write to discover what I believe."

"I am interested in the old lady in the story because she is an old lady, because what happens to her is significant."

"A person who is writing a story has to make up his mind what the story is about."

"My audience is the people who think God is dead."

"The novelist is an observer of life but he is more than that—he is a judge of it."

"One of the terrors for the Catholic writer is that they feel hemmed in by doctrine."

"The novelist is characteristically downstream from the culture."

"The reader who picks up a book by a Catholic author must expect to find virtue difficult and grace abundant."

"The writer's concern must always be the truth that underlies apparent truth."

"One of the oddities of being a writer is that you're working with something that is both very real and very unreal."

"A violent tale will return the reader to the real world."

"The novelist is responsible for the whole human condition, not just parts of it."

"The reader must always be the one to make the final judgment."

"The writer's true subject is always human suffering and redemption."

"The novelist is a messenger of truth wrapped in a disguise of fiction."

"The novel is a form that requires patience and demands from the reader a kind of surrender."

"Literature is the greatest invention because it captures the human soul."

"What does it mean to be a writer? It means asking oneself questions."

"A writer who doesn't exist in his writing is incomplete."

"The writer's challenge is to look at the world and see it freshly, as if for the first time."

"The real dramatic force in a story is the conflict within a character's own soul."

"The writer's business is to contemplate experience."

"What is written about in a book should come from lived experience."

"Every human being has a story that matters."

"Everything that happens in a story is shaped by the emotional truth at its core."

"A good story is always built on real human emotions."

"A writer must be a careful observer of humanity."

"The writer's job is to hold a mirror up to the world as it truly is."

"The best writers are students of human behavior."

"Stories have the power to transform how we see ourselves and others."