Quotes from Walter Besant

Perhaps, after all, the greatest psychologist is not the metaphysician but the novelist.

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.

This is a very simple Rule, but one to which there should be no exception — never to go beyond your own experience.

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.

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

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.

The measure of a man's success must be according to his ability. The advancement he makes from the station in which he was born gives the degree of his success.