Frank Norris

“I never truckled. I never took off the hat to Fashion and held it out for pennies. I told them the truth.”

“The People have a right, the essential and inalienable right, to know all that is done by their public servants.”

“Life is not a pleasure, but a duty.”

“No art that is not in the end understood by the People can live or ever did live a single generation.”

“The function of the novelist... is to comment upon life as he sees it.”

“By God, I will not compromise.”

“Naturalism is a form of romanticism, not an inner circle of realism.”

“The story is the main thing.”

“I detest 'fine writing,' 'style,' for its own sake.”

“The men who have done things are the men who have done one thing.”

“To be a naturalistic writer is to believe that life is a mess.”

“Believe me, I never scamp my work.”

“Terrible things must happen to the characters of the naturalistic tale.”