WIST Quotations

McLaughlin, Mignon -- The Neurotic’s Notebook, ch. 7 (1963)

Dave — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 00:35:55 +0000

Few of us write great novels; all of us live them.

Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) American journalist and author
The Neurotic’s Notebook, ch. 7 (1963)
(Source)

Bolt, Robert -- Doctor Zhivago: The Screenplay, “Author’s Note” (1965)

Dave — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 17:04:13 +0000

The fourth and most important difference between a novel and a film (or play) is that when the reader tires of a novel he can mark his place, put it down, and return to it later. But the attention of an audience must be held continuously. There must be an unbroken progression. It may be progression of the emotion or the thought or the action, but emotion and thought must issue in action or threaten to. In a dramatic medium such as film the characters cannot pause to propound ideas and emotions not directly relevant to their own dramatic situation. In the middle of War and Peace Tolstoy can plant a substantial essay on the nature of military power. In a film script one unnecessary page, one page not furthering the progression, will lose the attention of the audience for the next ten.

Robert Bolt (1924-1995) English dramatist
Doctor Zhivago: The Screenplay, “Author’s Note” (1965)
(Source)

Golding, William -- “Universal Pessimist, Cosmic Optimist,” Interview by MaryLynn Scott, Aurora Online (1990)

Dave — Thu, 19 Aug 2021 17:57:32 +0000

However you disguise novels, they are always biographies.

William Golding (1911-1983) British novelist, playwright, poet
“Universal Pessimist, Cosmic Optimist,” Interview by MaryLynn Scott, Aurora Online (1990)
(Source)

Shaw, George Bernard -- Letter to Upton Sinclair (12 Dec 1941)

Dave — Thu, 24 Sep 2020 15:21:38 +0000

I have regarded you, not as a novelist, but as an historian; for it is my considered opinion, unshaken at 85, that records of fact are not history. They are only annals, which cannot become historical until the artist-poet-philosopher rescues them from the unintelligible chaos of their actual occurrence and arranges them in works of art.

When people ask me what has happened in my long lifetime I do not refer them to the newspaper files and to the authorities, but to your novels. They object that the people in your books never existed; that their deeds were never done and their sayings never uttered. I assure them that they were, except that Upton Sinclair individualized and expressed them better than they could have done, and arranged their experiences, which as they actually occurred were as unintelligible as pied type, in significant and intelligible order.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Irish playwright and critic
Letter to Upton Sinclair (12 Dec 1941)

Bowen, Elizabeth -- “Truth and Fiction,” BBC Radio (Oct 1956)

Dave — Mon, 20 Jul 2020 19:30:38 +0000

A novel which survives, which withstands and outlives time, does do something more than merely survive. It does not stand still. It accumulates round itself the understanding of all these persons who bring to it something of their own. It acquires associations, it becomes a form of experience in itself, so that two people who meet can often make friends, find an approach to each other, because of this one great common experience they have had.

Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973) Irish author
“Truth and Fiction,” BBC Radio (Oct 1956)
(Source)

Chesterton, Gilbert Keith -- Heretics, ch. 15 “On Smart Novelists and the Smart Set” (1905)

Dave — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 04:03:37 +0000

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
Heretics, ch. 15 “On Smart Novelists and the Smart Set” (1905)
(Source)

Stout, Rex -- On “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” Invitation to Learning Radio Show, hosted by Mark Van Doren (Jan 1942)

Dave — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 20:25:45 +0000

I think the detective story is by far the best upholder of the democratic doctrine in literature. I mean, there couldn’t have been detective stories until there were democracies, because the very foundation of the detective story is the thesis that if you’re guilty you’ll get it in the neck and if you’re innocent you can’t possibly be harmed. No matter who you are. There was no such conception of justice until after 1830. There was no such thing as a policeman or a detective in the world before 1830, because the modern conception of the policeman and detective, namely, a man whose only function is to find out who did it and then get the evidence that will punish him, did not exist. … In Paris before the year 1800 — read the Dumas stories — there were gangs of people whose business was to go out and punish wrongdoers. But why? Because they had hurt De Marillac or Richelieu or the Duke or some Huguenot noble, not just because they had harmed society. It is only the modern policeman that is out to protect society.

Rex Stout (1886-1975) American writer
On “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” Invitation to Learning Radio Show, hosted by Mark Van Doren (Jan 1942)

Transcribed in Mark Van Doren, The New Invitation to Learning: The Essence of the Great Books of All Times (1942).

Jefferson, Thomas -- Letter (1771-08-03) to Robert Skipwith

Dave — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 13:41:04 +0000

Considering history as a moral exercise, her lessons would be too unfrequent if confined to real life. Of those recorded by historians few incidents have been attended with such circumstances as to excite in any high degree this sympathetic emotion of virtue. We are therefore wisely framed to be as warmly interested for a fictitious as for a real personage. The spacious field of imagination is thus laid open to our use, and lessons may be formed to illustrate and carry home to the mind every moral rule of life. Thus a lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics and divinity that ever were written.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter (1771-08-03) to Robert Skipwith
(Source)

Huxley, Aldous -- “Sermons in Cats,” Music at Night and Other Essays (1931)

Dave — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 17:36:32 +0000

I met, not long ago, a young man who aspired to become a novelist. Knowing that I was in the profession, he asked me to tell him how he should set to work to realize his ambition. I did my best to explain. “The first thing,” I said, “is to buy quite a lot of paper, a bottle of ink, and a pen. After that you merely have to write.”

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
“Sermons in Cats,” Music at Night and Other Essays (1931)
(Source)