Art & Creativity Quote by Leon Uris

Uris is quietly picking a fight with the romantic myth of the novelist as pure, untethered imagination. By ranking research as equal to or even above writing, he’s demoting prose from sacred artistry to visible surface: the finish, not the frame. The intent is partly defensive, partly aspirational. Defensive, because Uris wrote big, historically freighted bestsellers (Exodus, Trinity) that invited scrutiny from readers who wanted more than a good story; they wanted a credible world. Aspirational, because he’s arguing that authority is made, not bestowed. You earn it in the archives, in interviews, in the unglamorous accumulation of specifics that keep a sweeping narrative from collapsing into costume drama.

The subtext is about control. Research is a way to discipline the chaos of storytelling and to pre-empt critics by anchoring the novel in verifiable detail. It also hints at a craftsman’s ethic: you don’t get to improvise history just because your plot needs oxygen. That stance is especially telling for a mid-century popular writer whose audience expected novels to do double duty as entertainment and informal education.

There’s a second, sharper implication: research doesn’t just support the book, it shapes what the book can ethically claim. Uris’s certainty about “foundation” signals a belief that the writer’s job is to persuade, and persuasion requires infrastructure. The line flatters the reader, too: you’re not consuming fluff; you’re getting a constructed reality with load-bearing facts, designed to feel inevitable.