Anthony Trollope Quotes on Writing
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I hold that gentleman to be the best dressed whose dress no one observes. I am not sure but that the same may be said of an author's written language.
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The Rev. Septimus Harding was, a few years since, a beneficed clergyman residing in the cathedral town of _____; let us call it Barchester. Were we to name Wells or Salisbury, Exeter, Hereford, or Gloucester, it might be presumed that something personal was intended; and as this tale will refer mainly to the cathedral dignitaries of the of the town in question, we are anxious that no personality may be suspected.
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There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.
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The end of a novel, like the end of a children's dinner-party, must be made up of sweetmeats and sugar-plums.
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Before the reader is introduced to the modest country medical practitioner who is to be the chief personage of the following tale, it will be well that he should be made acquainted with some particulars as to the locality in which, and the neighbours among whom, our doctor followed his profession.
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It is not true that a rose by any other name will smell as sweet. Were it true, I should call this story 'The Great Orley Farm Case.' But who would ask for the ninth number of a serial work burthened with so very uncouth an appellation? Thence, and therefore,- Orley Farm.
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Satire, though it may exaggerate the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that it may be lashed.
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Take away from English authors their copyrights, and you would very soon take away from England her authors.
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The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little- or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives.
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As will so often be the case when a men has a pen in his hand. It is like a club or sledge-hammer,- in using which, either for defence or attack, a man can hardly measure the strength of the blows he gives.
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Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.
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Of all the needs a book has, the chief need is that it be readable.
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Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic.