Best 1169 quotes in «novel quotes» category

It seems to me that the basic plot of all historical novels is a romance swept aside by history.

It’s Fitzgerald’s thin-but-durable urge to affirm that finally makes Gatsby worthy of being our Great American Novel. Its soaring conclusion tells us that, even though Gatsby dies and the small and corrupt survive, his longing was nonetheless magnificent.

It's hard being a hostage in somebody else's mouth - or a character in somebody else's novel.

It's more like I write multiple first drafts, handwritten. So with my first novel, I wrote whole drafts from different points of view. There are different versions of that novel in a drawer on loose-leaf sheets. I won't even look at the first draft while I'm writing the second, and I won't look at the second before writing the third.

It's my own personal unconscious that ultimately creates the novel's aesthetic facade.

It's really a misconception to identify the writer with the main character, given that the author creates all the characters in the book. In certain ways, I'm every character. Then again, there is a huge gap between me as a person and what I do in the novel.

It’s such a confidence trick, writing a novel. The main person you have to trick into confidence is yourself. This is hard to do alone.

It's true, reading too many novels makes you go blind.

It takes a long time to write a novel when you have to keep interrupting your work to earn money.

It's weird - I don't feel like I'm a better or more confident writer because I'm publishing something. I think, for most writers as well, it's like reinventing the wheel every time. I have no idea what I'm doing writing a novel, and in some ways, it's the only way to do it.

It's with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.

I turned to the Partition experiences, which were churning in my mind. Then came my first novel Train to Pakistan.

It took me six novels before I felt confident of my voice as a writer.

I usually tame my off-kilter sense of humor for novels.

It was like being in a Jane Austen novel, but one with far less clothing.

I used to get criticized for putting food in novels.

I've always loved short stories. Even before I was a writer I was reading short stories - there were certain writers where I just felt like they could do in a short story what so many writers needed a whole novel to do, and that was really inspiring to me. Alice Munro, I felt that way about from an early time. Grace Paley.

I've always felt that life is a novel, and part of it is written for you, and part of it is written by you. It's up to you to write the ending, ultimately.

I've always wanted to write a novel. It's overwhelming and daunting, and it's one of those things that every writer fantasizes about doing.

I've always wondered why there isn't a great French novel about the German occupation. The nouveau roman authors weren't interested in telling that sort of thing.

I've had some tremendous adventures, good and bad. It's part of the novel, and a novel isn't interesting if it doesn't have some good and bad. And you don't know what good is if bad hasn't been a part of your life

I've never abandoned the novel.

I've never written an autobiographical novel in my life. I've never touched upon my life. I've never written a single scene that I can say took place.

I've never made an outline for any novel that I've written. Never.

I've never put Northern Ireland into a novel because it's not my territory. I come from the South, so my imaginative territory is very much the Republic of Ireland rather than the North. Even though, if I wrote a novel about the North, it might sell more.

I've never read a young adult novel, though. I'm sure I would love it, but I've never read one.

I've read enough novels to know just how much time & energy it takes to fall in love and I just don't have the time

I've read all of Sarah Waters's novels which have been translated into Korean.

I've seen novels that have grown out of one story in a collection. But it hasn't occurred to me to take any of those stories and build on them. They seem very finished for me, so I don't feel like going back and dredging them up.

I've started many novels, and they all ended on page seven.

I've written some short stories about my personal experience, but it's not something you can use everywhere. Every novel, every work of fiction, needs its own food.

I've never yet managed to write a novel which didn't have an Indian central character.

I've never really understood that whole thing of writers avoiding other writers' novels while they're working on their own.

I was uncomfortable writing fiction. My love was the personal essay rather than the novel.

I was in love with a whirlwind, so when the girl threw me over, I went home and finished my novel.

I was an English major in university and that got me into novels, but I read a lot of books as a kid.

I wasn't that into crime novels at all, but a friend introduced me to the work of Jim Thompson - I loved all his books.

I would like to carve my novel in a piece of wood.

I wonder if we are all wrong about each other, if we are just composing unwritten novels about the people we meet?

I would be rejected if I submitted any of my novels as romance novels.

I would like to do a novel where some curse turns that into how the world really is - a blessing or a curse, I don't know which.

I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.

I write novels because there is something I don't understand in reality.

I wrote a novel about the combat experiences I didn't have in Vietnam.

I wrote the first draft of my first novel at Michigan, and then I wrote the first draft of 'Salvage the Bones' at Stanford. So I workshopped the entire thing.

I write what I call 'novels of consolation' for people who are bright and sophisticated.

Let nothing novel be introduced!

Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks.

Last week I was just someone who had had a first novel published.

Michael Koryta is an amazingly talented writer, and I rank The Prophet as one of the sharpest and superbly plotted crime novels I've read in my life.