Novel Quotes
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.
Alice Mattison
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.
Rachel Kushner
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.
Antonio Lobo Antunes
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.
Joshua Cohen
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.
Karen Kingston
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.
Flannery O'Connor
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.
Louis Sachar
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.
Elizabeth Kolbert
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.
William Osler
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.
Ben Lerner
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.
Sarah Waters
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.
Patrick Ness
Writing a first novel was an arduous crash course. I learned so much in the six years it took me to write it, mostly technical things pertaining to craft.
Rachel Kushner
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.
J. A. Konrath
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.
Bob Mayer
It seems to me that the novel is very much alive as a form. Without any question, every epoch has its own forms, and the novel nowadays cannot resemble that of the nineteenth century. In this domain all experiments are justified, and it is better to write something new clumsily than to repeat the old brilliantly. In the nineteenth century, novels dealt with the fate of a person or of a family; this was linked to life in that period. In our time the destinies of people are interwoven. Whether man recognizes it or not, his fate is much more linked to that of many other people than it used to be.
Ilya Ehrenburg
