“Life is sometimes novel-shaped, mocking the efforts of those authors who, in an effort to make their novels life-shaped, spurn the easy symmetry and cheap resonance of reality.”

“All art is to some extent shaped by what has gone before. But that is an organic process, not a conscious intention. Novels are made out of novels as much as they are out of life.”

“I suspect that there are just two sorts of lawyers: those who spend their efforts making life easy for other people—and parasites.”

“It would have been impossible for me to have told anyone what I derived from these novels, for it was nothing less than a sense of life itself. All my life had shaped me for the realism, the naturalism of the modern novel, and I could not read enough of them.”

“The novel is not the author's confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become”

“Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life.”

“The novel is the one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on the ether. But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble.”

“There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author. The term is 'idiot'.”

“Much like the French (or like ourselves, their apes),
Who with strange habit do disguise their shapes;
Who loving novels, full of affectation,
Receive the manners of each other nation.”

“Writing as a process of personal expression is an effort to provide meaning to life. Whether it is in the form of poetry which gives a touch of beauty to what we think or feel, or novels or stories as imaginative imitations of life. Whether it will succeed or fail, at least the writing will make us wiser in interpreting our own lives.”