Sarah Dessen Quotes

Writing a novel is like childbirth: once you realize how awful it really is, you never want to do it again.

Sarah Dessen

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• Awful
• Childbirth

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Quotes to Explore

• We never had books at home, but my dad, seeing how keen I was to read, took me to Islington Library when I was about eight and we pulled out two - a Biggles and a science fiction novel. I never got the ace fighter pilot but fell in love with all things to do with the future and space. Isaac Asimov soon became my guiding star.

  

  Gary Kemp Spandau Ballet
  • Home
  • Future
  • Space

• I wrote my first novel in eighth grade for a boy named Kenny on whom I had an unrequited crush and who sat behind me in social studies.

  

  Kate Christensen
  • Boy
  • Social
  • Novel

• The novel is a seduction; a reader has to be seduced.

  

  T. C. Boyle
  • Novel
  • Seduction
  • Seduced

• In addition I wanted to write a Southern novel, because I'm a Southerner.

  

  E. O. Wilson
  • Write
  • Novel
  • Southern

• We had to work five back-to-back shows, forty-five minutes on, fifteen minutes off. That's just an awful lot of singing.

  

  Wanda Jackson
  • Work
  • Singing
  • Shows

• There's some awfully good things done today and some awful terrible things done today,

  

  Carl Reiner
  • Good
  • Done
  • Today

• Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen.

  

  Flannery O'Connor
  • Free
  • Freedom
  • Integrity

• The idea of what it is like to lose everything is awful.

  

  Andrew Solomon
  • Ideas
  • Loses
  • Awful

• Hello, Minister!" bellowed Percy, sending a neat jinx straight at Thicknesse, who dropped his wand and clawed at the front of his robes, apparently in awful discomfort. "Did I mention I'm resigning?

  

  Joanne Rowling
  • Awful
  • Hello
  • Jinx

• There are few punishments too severe for a popular novel writer.

  

  S. S. Van Dine
  • Popular
  • Novel
  • Punishment

• It seems to me, correct me if I'm wrong, that there are an awful lot of people in Manhattan. And it's getting worse.

  

  Cynthia Heimel
  • People
  • Seems
  • Awful

• I have an awful lot to learn. My dream is to get better and better as I get older.

  

  Tony Bennett
  • Dream
  • Awful

• Turks continued their previous policy. They would not stop committing massive and most awful massacres that even Leng Timur would not dare to do.

  

  Valery Bryusov
  • Stop
  • Awful
  • Genocide

• I certainly wake up every morning and thank God that I'm not a novelist because the theater is tough, but novel writing is infinitely harder. Especially with the economics of serious fiction being what they are in America.

  

  Tony Kushner
  • Up
  • God
  • Writing

• I always think first about the nature of the story. When I had the idea for 'The Namesake,' I felt that it had to be a novel - it couldn't work as a story.

  

  Jhumpa Lahiri
  • Thinking
  • Ideas
  • Stories

• History is present in all my novels. And whether I am directly talking about the sociological moment or just immersing my character in the environment, I am very aware of it.

  

  Paul Auster
  • Character
  • Moments
  • Environment

• There's a difference between doing memoir and writing a novel. If I had put the story of the boy killing my dog - and that was Eric also, what a little monster he was! - in a novel, even if I took it directly from life, it would be fiction.

  

  Paul Auster
  • Writing
  • Dog
  • Boys

• I want to write a novel about Silence," he said; “the things people don’t say.

  

  Virginia Woolf
  • People
  • Writing
  • Silence

• There are some varieties of fiction that I never touch - mystery stories, for instance, which I abhor, and historical novels. I also detest the so-called "powerful" novel - full of commonplace obscenities and torrents of dialog.

  

  Vladimir Nabokov
  • Powerful
  • Mystery
  • Novel

• To some people, I may seem calm. But if you could peer beneath the surface, you would see that I'm like a duck--paddling, paddling, paddling.

  

  Scott Stossel
  • People
  • May
  • Calm

• There is much suffering in the world - physical, material, mental. The suffering of some can be blamed on the greed of others. The material and physical suffering is suffering from hunger, from homelessness, from all kinds of diseases. But the greatest suffering is being lonely, feeling unloved, having no one. I have come more and more to realize that it is being unwanted that is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience.

  

  Mother Teresa
  • World
  • Suffering
  • Feelings

• The deepest depth of vulgarism is that of setting up money as the ark of the covenant.

  

  Thomas Carlyle
  • Money
  • Covenant
  • Vulgarism

• The habit of committing our thoughts to writing is a powerful means of expanding the mind, and producing a logical and systematic arrangement of our views and opinions. It is this which gives the writer a vast superiority, as to the accuracy and extent of his conceptions, over the mere talker. No one can ever hope to know the principles of any art or science thoroughly who does not write as well as read upon the subject.

  

  William Blaikie
  • Writing
  • Powerful
  • Principles

• Writing a novel is like childbirth: once you realize how awful it really is, you never want to do it again.

  

  Sarah Dessen
  • Novel
  • Awful
  • Childbirth