Novel Quotes
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We have a thriving subculture of 'independent' American movies that makes an impact on America as a whole roughly equivalent to that of a the modern literary novel. These are the films sincere viewers marry, whereas, once upon a time, movies were a lifetime of one night stands.
Edward Jay Epstein
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To write a novel is fundamentally an act of impudence. To comb one's hair is also an act of impudence, especially when it's done to try to cover a scar running across the top of one's forehead. But combing one's hair is an act of minor impudence, whereas writing is a more serious affair. We mask reality, we hide our fears, we reinvent things that have been said, and above all, the people who said them. Writing a novel implies a certain perversity. It's not something one can do with a tortoiseshell comb. It is perhaps for that reason that they take away my pen at night. Not, as they pretend, to prevent me from accidentally stabbing myself in the throat with it- but to prevent me from killing anyone else.
Paco Ignacio Taibo II
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While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels, I liked them. And there was a period when I read many of them. I absorbed the form, and I liked it, it was a good one, mostly the hard-boiled school, you know, Chandler, Hammett, and their heirs. That was the direction that interested me most.
Paul Auster
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Whether it's a letter, song lyrics, part of a novel, or instructions on how to fix a kitchen sink, it's writing. You keep your craft honed, you acquire the discipline to finish things. You turn into a self-taskmaster.
Jimmy Buffett
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When I began to write seriously, 40 years ago now, my chosen form was the novel.
William Nicholson
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Somebody said, 'Hey, there is a lull in your career. Why don't you write books about your [dyslexia]?' We are currently writing our 34th novel.
Henry Winkler
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I once had an editor advise me, as I was revising one of my early novels, to add more characters. I played around with the idea. As soon as I'd decided a few fresh faces and give them something to do, I realized that what my editor had really asked for was more plot. Ding. More characters equals more action.
Elizabeth Sims
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I created a character whose motives were pure and good and she was going to go out and save the whole world. But the truth is, you can't save the whole world, but you can save one. And that was the whole thrust of the novel - to save just one.
Lurlene McDaniel
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The writer's job is not to write a novel, hold it up and say, “Here I am,” but to write a novel, hold it up and say, “Here YOU are.
Rita Mae Brown
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But when I say it isn't meant for anyone's eyes, I don't mean it in the sense of one of those novel manuscripts people keep in a drawer, insisting they don't care if anyone else ever reads it or not.The people I have known who do that, I am convinced, have no faith in themselves as writers and know, deep down, that the novel is flawed, that they don't know how to tell the story, or they don't understand what the story is, or they haven't really got a story to tell. The manuscript in the drawer is the story.
Katharine Weber
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All great novels are great fairy tales.
Vladimir Nabokov
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A novel should be an experience and convey an emotional truth rather than arguments.
Joyce Cary
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When I look back over my novels what I find is that when I think I'm finished with a theme, I'm generally not. And usually themes will recur from novel to novel in odd, new guises.
Richard Russo
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When I adapt a novel, I don’t really use the script, I use the book; when I did Apocalypse Now, I used Heart of Darkness. Novels usually have so much rich material.
Francis Ford Coppola
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Madly, futilely, I wrote novel after novel, eight in all, that failed to find a publisher. I persisted because for me the novel was the supreme literary form: not just one among many, not a relic of the past, but the way we communicate to one another the subtlest truths about this business of living.
William Nicholson
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Novels are fictions and therefore they tell lies, but through those lies every novelist attempts to tell the truth about the world.
Paul Auster
