Frank Norris quotes:

Fancy a novel about Chicago or Buffalo, let us say, or Nashville, Tennessee! There are just three big cities in the United States that are 'story cities'- New York, of course, New Orleans, and, best of the lot, San Francisco.

The people have a right to the truth as they have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Truth is a thing immortal and perpetual, and it gives to us a beauty that fades not away in time.

[The Muse of our Fiction of the future] will lead you - if you are humble and honest with her - straight into a World of Working Men, crude of speech, swift of action, strong of passion, straight to the heart of a new life.

Evil is short lived. Never judge of the whole round of life by the mere segment you can see. The whole is, in the end, perfect.

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

I never truckled. I never took off the hat to Fashion and held it out for pennies. I told them the truth. They liked it or they didn't like it. What had that to do with me? I told them the truth.

Things can happen in some cities and the tale of them will be interesting: the same story laid in another city would be ridiculous.

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

Always blame conditions, not men

No one to love, none to caress, Left all alone in this world's wilderness.