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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• 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

• I really romanticized being pregnant. Then I realized, this is awful!

  

  Marcia Cross
  • Awful
  • Pregnant
  • Romanticized

• 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

• The lives God gives to us, the awful things we can’t escape from. Sometimes I think that sort of God would enjoy making hell for us after we die.

  

  C.J. Sansom
  • God
  • Thinking
  • Giving

• 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

• Novels are fictions and therefore they tell lies, but through those lies every novelist attempts to tell the truth about the world.

  

  Paul Auster
  • World
  • Lying
  • Fiction

• 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

• I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it.

  

  Vladimir Nabokov
  • World
  • Character
  • Past

• Even when there's not a joke or a hook, the first line has to be good and snapem to attention. Songs ain't novels. You don't have 30 pages to slowly wrap somebody in. They're more like short stories or poems. If the first line hasn't grabbed them, you won't get to the second line. Once you've developed an audience, you may have some luxury and trust, so you don't have to knock 'em over the head with line one.

  

  Dan Bern
  • Writing
  • Song
  • Attention

• It's really ironic that I won, because that's not the goal that I had in mind when I went out to skate.

  

  Sarah Hughes
  • Goal
  • Ironic
  • Won

• Then I felt as if my thoughts were cut off in the middle, absorbing and yet defective, with an urgent need for verification, for development, yet without conviction, without faith in themselves.

  

  Elena Ferrante
  • Faith
  • Thoughts
  • Development

• 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