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I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story.

Wilkie Collins

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Wilkie Collins
Age: 65 †
Born: 1824
Born: January 8
Died: 1889
Died: September 23
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet Lawyer
Writer
London
England
William Collins
William Wilkie Collins
Tell
Primaries
Stories
Primary
Work
Held
Always
Object
Objects
Fiction
Opinion
Story
Fashioned

More quotes by Wilkie Collins

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The future of English fiction may rest with this Unknown Public - a reading public of three millions which lies right out of the pale of true literary civilization - which is now waiting to be taught the difference between a good book and a bad.
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I am a bundle of nerves dressed up to look like a man!
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This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.
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I sadly want a reform in the construction of children. Nature's only idea seems to be to make them machines for the production of incessant noise.
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Husbands and wives talk of the cares of matrimony, and bachelors and spinsters bear them.
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The law will argue any thing, with any body who will pay the law for the use of its brains and its time.
Wilkie Collins
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I never paid you a compliment, Rachel, in my life. Successful love may sometimes use the language of flattery, I admit. But hopeless love, dearest, always speaks the truth.
Wilkie Collins
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Yes! the books - the generous friends who met me without suspicion - the merciful masters who never used me ill! The only years of my life that I can look back on with something like pride... Early and late, through the long winter nights and the quiet summer days, I drank at the fountain of knowledge, and never wearied of the draught.
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Habits of literary composition are perfectly familiar to me. One of the rarest of all the intellectual accomplishments that a man can possess is the grand faculty of arranging his ideas. Immense privilege! I possess it. Do you?
Wilkie Collins
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I haven't much time to be fond of anything ... but when I have a moment's fondness to bestow, most times ... the roses get it. I began my life among them in my father's nursery garden, and I shall end my life among them, if I can. Yes. One of these days (please God) I shall retire from catching thieves, and try my hand at growing roses.
Wilkie Collins
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I am thinking,’ he remarked quietly, ’whether I shall add to the disorder in this room, by scattering your brains about the fireplace.
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I used to attend scientific experiments when I was a girl at school. They invariably ended in an explosion. If Mr. Jennings will be so very kind, I should like to be warned of the explosion this time. With a view to getting it over, if possible, before I go to bed.
Wilkie Collins
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She looked so irresistibly beautiful as she said those brave words that no man alive could have steel his heart against her.
Wilkie Collins
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I am a citizen of the world, and I have met, in my time, with so many different sorts of virtue, that I am puzzled, in my old age, to say which is the right sort and which is the wrong.
Wilkie Collins
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No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words with a woman.
Wilkie Collins
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The books - the generous friends who met me without suspicion - the merciful masters who never used me ill!
Wilkie Collins
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Pedants, who have the least knowledge to be proud of, are impelled most by vanity.
Wilkie Collins
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Some of us rush through life, and some of us saunter through life. Mrs Vesey sat through life.
Wilkie Collins
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I am not against hasty marriages where a mutual flame is fanned by an adequate income.
Wilkie Collins
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Men little know when they say hard things to us how well we remember them, and how much harm they do us.
Wilkie Collins