“The novel, the novel proper that is, is about people's treatment of each other, and so it is about human values.”

— Iris Murdoch , Sartre: Romantic Rationalist

Source: Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953), Ch. 10, p. 138

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Iris Murdoch 61

British writer and philosopher 1919–1999

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

Review of One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/tick, 2018
2010s

“Why did people ask "What is it about?" as if a novel had to be about only one thing.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book Americanah

Source: Americanah (2013)

“The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

“I'm hopeless about novels just now”

Rose Macaulay (1881–1958) English novelist and writer

Potterism (1921) p.196. https://books.google.com/books?id=9tDSm2WzQxsC&pg=PA196
Context: Jane: What do you think of his book Arthur?
Gideon: I don't think of it. I've had no reason to, particularly. I've not had to review it.... I'm afraid I'm hopeless about novels just now, that's the fact. I'm sick of the form—slices of life served up cold in three hundred pages. Oh, it's very nice; it makes nice reading for people. But what's the use? Except, of course, to kill time for those who prefer it dead. But as things in themselves, as art, they've been ruined by excess. My critical sense is blunted just now. I can hardly feel the difference, though I can see it, between a good novel and a bad one. I couldn't write one, good or bad, to save my life, I know that. And I've got to the stage when I wish other people wouldn't. I wish everyone would shut up, so that we could hear ourselves think...