Novels Quotes
-
People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.
Flannery O'Connor
-
With Ibrahim al-Koni, what I figured out was - and you'll see this in his novels - if your time is limited, make the unit of the chapters small so that you can finish one a day, at least in the first draft. Once you have the first draft it's living, and you can coax it to grow and trim it and reshape it and so on. But get that first draft. I think if I'd gone to an MFA program and learned that, it would have been money well spent. But translation has been that for me.
Elliott Colla
-
Kafka is one of my very favorite writers. Kafka's fictional world is already so complete that trying to follow in his steps is not just pointless, but quite risky, too. What I see myself doing, rather, is writing novels where, in my own way, I dismantle the fictional world of Kafka that itself dismantled the existing novelistic system.
Haruki Murakami
-
I don't trust novels with points, do you? If a novel is only about a point, the writer should just say it in as few words as possible so we can take it in and go back to watching 'The Bachelor' on television.
William Lashner
-
When I was a teenager, I thought how great it would be if only I could write novels in English. I had the feeling that I would be able to express my emotions so much more directly than if I wrote in Japanese.
Haruki Murakami
-
There are many reasons I love novels with multiple narratives. In novels where the events are filtered through the consciousness of a single 'reliable' narrator, I often wonder, is this the whole story? What could be missing here?
Susan Barker
-
If politicians can't do it, I want to do it. We have to do it. Artists, put it in paintings. Poets, put it in poems, novels. That's what we have to do. And I think it's so important to save the world.
Michael Jackson
-
I think, above all, the characters in my novels feel universal to the readers.
Nicholas Sparks
-
You tempt me to telephone Matron and ask her to let you have the afternoon off.’ He spoke lightly and Sarah felt a surprising regret that he couldn’t possibly mean it. ‘That sort of thing happens in novels, never in real life. I can imagine Matron’s feelings!
Betty Neels
-
Now there's nothing wrong with Booker prize novels - we all have wobbling tables or draughts coming in under the door
Conn Iggulden
-
Graphic novels might really speak to one child who's struggling with the other kinds of reading and might help them discover that storytelling is joyful and personal and illuminating. They might find your way in auditorily by listening to audio books in the car instead of playing Game Boys or watching DVDs.
Emma Walton Hamilton
-
Historians turning their hands to fiction are all the rage. Since Alison Weir led the way in 2006, an ever-growing number of established non-fiction writers - Giles Milton, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Harry Sidebottom, Patrick Bishop, Ian Mortimer and myself included - have written historical novels.
Saul David
-
I often feel happier, after putting down some of my own experiences in my journal, than I do in reading much. Novels, even if they are good, pass out of my memory very rapidly. I enjoy it as I should a scene at the theatre; but am not essentially benefited by the incidents or morals. What more desirable at this period of my life than to find sources of daily peace and joy from within; that I think is true life.
Abby May Alcott
-
I'm always interested in a claustrophobic situation where people might be powerless to do things. My first three novels were all about families. Things that happen in a house within a family, because you're a child or because you want to keep the family together, you suffer things you might not have had to suffer if you weren't in that situation.
Lily King
-
The whole 'starting with stories, ending with novels' thing, it's probably too ingrained in the industry and the psyche to change it.
Stephen Graham Jones
-
My novels tend to take a long time to become exactly what they're going to be. They're fluid messes until I've done a ton of editing and refining and rewriting. When I write novels, I always make related scrapbooks to help me organize and test my intentions.
Dennis Cooper
-
I read many wonderful novels, though I now find the idea of literary fiction obsolete.
Simon Sebag Montefiore
-
We like to look out on the world and see ourselves, so we have many, many novels, memoirs, and short stories in Iraq that are largely about Americans in Iraq, doing what Americans do.
Elliott Colla
