Finding the Strength To Write a Novel

[To complete a novel] physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.

Haruki Murakami 

The Spare Time Writer

I was brought up to think you had to have a day job, and write in your spare time.

Philip Larkin

One Novelist's Life Habits

My habits are simple, my tastes banal, soccer matches on the TV, an occasional cup of wine or a gulp of canned beer, sunbaths on the lawn, and composing chess problems.

Vladimir Nabokov 

Tolstoy's Work Habits

I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine.

Leo Tolstoy 

The Hyper-Intellectual Novel

There's a fashion now [2015] for fat, hyper-intellectual, cooler-than-thou novels that are loaded with lard and siphoned of believable feeling…

Mary Karr

Being Inspired to Write

I write when the spirit moves me, and the spirit moves me every day.

William Faulkner 

The Suicidal Writer

Many people ask why a writer commits suicide. But I think that people who ask don't know the vanity and the nothingness of writing. I think it is very usual and natural for a writer to commit suicide, because in order to keep on writing he must be a very strong person.

Abe Kobo