Walter Besant > Quotes

“Perhaps, after all, the greatest psychologist is not the metaphysician but the novelist.”
― Walter Besant

“it is the contempt which the practical man feels for the dreamer, the strong man for the weak, the man who can do for the man who can only look on and talk. The”
― Walter Besant, The Art of Fiction

“The daily life of the world is not dramatic—it is monotonous ; the novelist makes it dramatic by his silences, his suppressions, and his exaggerations.”
― Walter Besant, The Art of Fiction

“Fiction is an Art, and, like all other Arts, that it is governed by certain laws, methods, and rules, which it is their first business to learn.”
― Walter Besant, The Art of Fiction: Walter Besant and Henry James Discuss the Craft

“The Art of Fiction requires first of all the power of description, truth, and fidelity, observation, selection, clearness of conception and of outline, dramatic grouping, directness of purpose, a profound belief on the part of the story-teller in the reality of his story, and beauty of workmanship. It is, moreover, an Art which requires of those who follow it seriously that they must be unceasingly occupied in studying the ways of mankind, the social laws, the religions, philosophies, tendencies, thoughts, prejudices, superstitions of men and women. They must consider as many of the forces which act upon classes and upon individuals as they can discover; they should be always trying to put themselves into the place of another; they must be as inquisitive and as watchful as a detective, as suspicious as a criminal lawyer, as eager for knowledge as a physicist, and withal fully possessed of that spirit to which nothing appears mean, nothing contemptible, nothing unworthy of study, which belongs to human nature.”
― Walter Besant, The Art of Fiction: Walter Besant and Henry James Discuss the Craft

“This is the old way of thinking, and most people think first as they have been taught to think; and next, as they see others think.”
― Walter Besant, The Art of Fiction

“This is a very simple Rule, but one to which there should be no exception — never to go beyond your own experience.”
― Walter Besant, The Art of Fiction: Walter Besant and Henry James Discuss the Craft

“The drinking of gin at one time threatened, literally, to destroy the whole of the working classes of London.”
― Walter Besant, The History of London