Novels Quotes
-
I don't like novels that tie everything up in a plot-y way. I always think that's not really true of life, particularly of people in power.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Few real people appear in my two novels, actually. "Ari" appears on the edge of this book a couple of times - but on the edge, she's never in it, even if she's a determining force from the outside. Everybody in the first book was basically made up, if never from scratch.
-
Novels begin, not on the page, but in meditation and day-dreaming - In thinking, not writing.
-
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!
-
When I left the University of Santo Tomas, I had but a smattering of Spanish. My friends made sport of me. What keen mortification did I suffer at my ignorance! One day, no longer able to stand the jeerings of my friends, I made up my mind to learn Spanish. I purchased a dozen good novels and began to read. I did not spend hours over a grammar, but just kept on reading, taking care to remember the idioms. In the meantime my library grew. At the end of three years my knowledge of Spanish and of literature in general was far beyond that of my friends. It was then my turn to laugh!
-
I think that novels are one of the best means that we have to communicate both with the past and with the future.
-
Many great novels have shown a world torn to shreds by the brutality of war. To do so, their authors ground their texts in the details of destruction and decay.
-
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?
-
I think, above all, the characters in my novels feel universal to the readers.
-
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.
-
My novels about medieval Wales were set in unexplored terrain; my readers did not know what lay around every bend in the road.
-
All my life I have been reading romance novels. Those stupid books ruined me. I've always wanted that fire that every book I ever read talks about.
-
I don't think I'm interested in writing women's novels anymore.
-
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.
-
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.
-
I read many wonderful novels, though I now find the idea of literary fiction obsolete.
-
If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden.
-
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.
-
The whole 'starting with stories, ending with novels' thing, it's probably too ingrained in the industry and the psyche to change it.
-
I have read all my novels that were translated into English. Reading my novels is enjoyable because I forget almost all the content in them.
-
I think people who share my dreams can enjoy reading my novels. And that's a wonderful thing. I said that myths are like a reservoir of stories, and if I can act as a similar kind of "reservoir," albeit a modest one, that would make me very happy.
-
Because I think of novels as collaborative enterprises between the writer and the reader, all of my novels so far have ending with endings that maybe point in more than one direction, and that seems important to me because it seems important to me that after you've invested twenty or thirty hours of your imaginative life into this narrative that you have some stake in how it ends.
