A Quote by Fyodor Dostoevsky

A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

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Poetry Work Impression Must Novel Order Spirit Tranquility Write

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Fyodor Dostoevsky
Russian - Novelist
November 11, 1821 - February 9, 1881

When you spend time with your friends, what do you talk about? Those things which made an impression on you that day, that week ... I write stories the same way. Events at home, in school, at work, in the street, these are the bases for a story. Some experiences leave such a deep impression that instead of talking about them at the club I work them into a novel.

Naguib Mahfouz

In order to write poetry, you must first invent a poet who will write it.

Antonio Machado

Poetry can be criticized only through poetry. A critique which itself is not a work of art, either in content as representation of the necessary impression in the process of creation, or through its beautiful form and in its liberal tone in the spirit of the old Roman satire, has no right of citizenship in the realm of art.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The DNA of the novel - which, if I begin to write nonfiction, I will write about this - is that: the title of the novel is the whole novel. The first line of the novel is the whole novel. The point of view is the whole novel. Every subplot is the whole novel. The verb tense is the whole novel.

Mary Kay Zuravleff

I believe that the short story is as different a form from the novel as poetry is, and the best stories seem to me to be perhaps closer in spirit to poetry than to novels.

Tobias Wolff

I write poems about relationships, love relationships, and I'm not able to do that all the time. I could go two years without writing poems, and then write a dozen. Having a novel to work on, with the intricate puzzle of character and plot to work out, is satisfying for the time there is no poetry.

May Sarton

The work of God's Holy Spirit begins with bruising. In order to be saved, the fallow ground must be plowed up, the hard heart must be broken, the rock must be split apart.

Charles Spurgeon

Three characteristics a work of fiction must possess in order to be successful: 1. It must have a precise and suspenseful plot. 2. The author must feel a passionate urge to write it. 3. He must have the conviction, or at least the illusion, that he is the only one who can handle this particular theme.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

A novel is an impression, not an argument; and there the matter must rest.

Thomas Hardy

I don't think I'd have the stamina, skill or ability to write a novel, but I'd love to write short stories and poetry, because those are my two passions.

Daniel Radcliffe

There have always been great defenses of poetry, and I've tried to write mine, and I think all of my work and criticism is a defense of poetry to try and keep something alive in poetry.

Edward Hirsch

I always was interested in prose. As a teenager, I published short stories. And I always wanted to write the long short story, I wanted to write a novel. Now that I have attained, shall I say, a respectable age, and have had experiences, I feel much more interested in prose, in the novel. I feel that in a novel, for example, you can get in toothbrushes and all the paraphernalia that one finds in dally life, and I find this more difficult in poetry.

Sylvia Plath

If someone said, I want to translate your novel into Igbo, I would say, Go ahead. But when I write in the Igbo language, I write my own dialect. I write some poetry in that dialect.

Chinua Achebe

One must be just a little crazy to write a great novel. One must be capable of allowing the darkest, most ancient and shrewd parts of one’s being to take over the work from time to time.

John Gardner

My life's purpose is to write poetry - but behind the poetry must be the vision of a fresh revelation for men.

William Soutar

I suspect there are two kinds of novelists. Those who have a point of view and have something to say and then write a novel in order to say that thing, and those of us who write the book in order to find out what we think about that thing.

Neil Gaiman

A Quote by Fyodor Dostoevsky

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