Writing Brilliance Quotes

I have always felt a special affinity with V. S. Pritchett. He worked from the ear, primarily, as I do, and he was an all-rounder, writing short stories, novels, memoir, travelogue, critical biography. He lived to be almost 100, and he never stopped, and his work is unified by a great generosity of spirit.

My first book was the most successful debut novel in the U.K. ever and every one of my books has reached number one in the U.K. Clearly the British know brilliance when they see it.

I don't think anything you've written is immortal as yet.

Great writers are the saints for the godless.

Nobody writes like Nabokov; nobody ever will. What I would give to write one sentence like Vladimir!

I won't be attempting to write Jane Austen-style prose - that would be suicidal. But I will attempt to bring the highest level of my own prose, and to make it sparkle.

Literature is an avenue to glory, ever open for those ingenious men who are deprived of honours or of wealth.

James Salter has talents on the page we novelists would sell souls to the devil for.