In mid-20th-century America, it could be argued that the novelist still had the most claim of anyone to omniscience. Whatever he/she couldn't prove, he/she could gesture at.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
What is now proved was once only imagined.
Most writers are drawn to what is unknown, rather than what is clear in any tale.
The greatest writers of this age... are aware of the mystery of our existence.
An extraordinary amount of arrogance is present in any claim of having been the first in inventing something.
The novelist has a responsibility to adhere to the facts as closely as possible, and if they are inconvenient, that's where the art comes in. You must work with intractable facts and find the dramatic shape inside them.
There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.
Mystery is but another name for ignorance; if we were omniscient, all would be perfectly plain!
In a certain way, novelists become unacknowledged historians, because we talk about small, tiny, little anonymous moments that won't necessarily make it into the history books.
These rare senses and powers of reasoning were given to be used freely, but not audaciously, to discover, not to pervert the truth.
Every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic.