Novel Quotes
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I get to a certain point, and I think in a novel it's about the third draft, when I want other eyes on it.
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In addition I wanted to write a Southern novel, because I'm a Southerner.
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So many people have the TV or radio constantly turned on “for company,” or spend their time reading trashy novels, aimlessly surfing the Net, and so on. Then suddenly one day you are old or sick and you realize you have done nothing with your life. All your thoughts are other people's thoughts and you have no idea who you really are or what the purpose of your life might be.
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I'm just giving you some spiel, the ludicrous plot of a novel, a story I invented to touch your heart—one-third bullshit, one-third booze, and one-third genuine tenderness, you know the kind of thing.
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When I write a novel, every word is mine. I welcome suggestions from my editor, but in the end, I make all the final decisions.
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I know there are writers who like to say that every novel is hard, and it doesn't get easier. That may be the case, and I've only written two. But the first, to me, was characterized by an enduring oscillation between perseverance and a profound doubt.
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As it can be maintained that all the great advances have come from men under forty, so the history of the world shows that a very large proportion of the evils may be traced to the sexagenarians, nearly all the great mistakes politically and socially, all of the worst poems, most of the bad pictures, a majority of the bad novels and not a few of the bad sermons and speeches.
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I don't have my novel outlined, and I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again.
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The current extinction has its own novel cause: not an asteroid or a massive volcanic eruption but "one weedy species". We're seeing right now that a mass extinction can be caused by human beings.
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The story and the poem are obviously changed by being placed in the novel, so in a sense they're no longer the works that preceded the novel.
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I think of a book and a play, or a book and a movie, as two separate things - I don't think of it as my novel having a new life.
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Read like mad. But try to do it analytically - which can be hard, because the better and more compelling a novel is, the less conscious you will be of its devices. It's worth trying to figure those devices out, however: they might come in useful in your own work.
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You write a novel by inventing a world and inventing the rules that govern that world. Then you break the rules when you want to.
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In every first novel the hero is the author as Christ or Faust.
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The novel is a seduction; a reader has to be seduced.
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Every once in a while I feel the tremendous force of the novel. But it does not stay with me.
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For me, when I start a novel, I only have a general sense of what I am going to do - usually three or four big scenes or something to which I can really respond emotionally.
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I always felt a little worm inside me: 'Now you need to write a novel with a woman protagonist.'
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A couple of times he called the second he'd finished reading a novel and just had to tell me about it, and I know it sounds hokey and librarianish to say so, but I just swooned when he did that.
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I don't begin a novel with a shopping list - the novel becomes my shopping list as I write it.
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Completing any writing project, particularly a novel, is a daunting prospect. Many people become frozen by the prospect. Others keep waiting for the right time. Some wait for the spark of inspiration. Even experienced writers find it is easier to do anything other than actually write.
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If a traditional publisher offered me a quarter of a million dollars for a novel, I'd consider it. But anything less than that, I'm sure I can do better on my own.
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Completing any writing project, particularly a novel, is a daunting prospect. Many people become frozen by the prospect. Others keep waiting for the right time. Some wait for the spark of inspiration. Even experienced writers find it is easier to do anything other than actually write.
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What we know about writing the novel is the novel.
