Best 1169 quotes in «novel quotes» category

We have never been more detached from one another, or lonelier. In a world consumed by ever more novel modes of socializing, we have less and less actual society. We live in an accelerating contradiction: The more connected we become, the lonelier we are.

We have to diversify, we have to find work we can do that helps other people while helping ourselves, work that has to do with writing that isn't necessarily just writing saleable novels or getting huge advances.

We only have one story. All novels, all poetry are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil.

What you can do with a short story that you can't do with a novel is punch someone in the gut, in the best of ways.

We trust to novels to train us in the practice of great indignations and great generosity.

What do you do when Mom leaves you alone like this? (Kat) I write romance novels. (Acheron)

We're all just animals. That's all we are, and everything else is just an elaborate justification of our instincts. That's where music comes from. And romantic poetry. And bad novels.

Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose).

Whether early or late, the Parker novels are all superlative literary entertainments.

When I'm working on a novel, I work 70-hour weeks.

When I write, I get glimpses into future novels.

When someone asks me to list the 10 best novels ever written, I always refuse to answer.

When you read a novel, you know what to expect because you've been reading novels for a long time.

When I'm filling notebooks I'm trying to pin down what I'm really interested in and to find those details that are so hard to come by, details that I can look at and believe are right on the mark. Things which bring a novel to life. They can take a while to come.

When I worked as an editor, I read new novels being published in India every few days. They excited me tremendously for the first fifty pages or so, and boasted some true linguistic genius at times, but none of those writers could occupy more than one mind at once.

When one is writing a novel in the first person, one must be that person.

Why did people ask "What is it about?" as if a novel had to be about only one thing.

Without explaining why, and, most of all, without naming other authors or books, I can only say my novels are influenced by love and death.

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.

With relatively few exceptions, the novel sacrifices too much, for me, on the altar of plot.

You learn by writing short stories. Keep writing short stories. The money's in novels, but writing short stories keeps your writing lean and pointed.

Working on an essay versus a novel is like the difference between seeing to that curtain and seeing to New Jersey.

Writers are notoriously unable to know about themselves. Faulkner thought 'The Fable' was his best novel. F. Scott Fitzgerald liked 'Tender Is the Night,' an experimental novel.

Writing a novel is like working on foreign policy. There are problems to be solved. It's not all inspirational.

You are accidentally leaving your DNA all over everything in a novel because it's all coming from you.

You know, I can imagine not writing a novel and writing poetry only.

You need a theme in a picture book just as much or maybe even more than you need it in a novel.

Writing a novel, I am making is an object that has a life and identity of its own, apart from me.

Writing novels is the most exciting

You know, the point of a novel - or to me, the point of a novel, the gift of a novel is to go really deeply inside people's lives and inside their personal experiences.

A familiarity had been activated in a reoccurring theme that had been ignited from a recognizable old pattern of self distancing behavior. The tone of Laura’s voice and the poise of her body language seemed to shrug at the expectations of Ed’s reconciliatory efforts. It felt to Ed as though their relationship was right back to the same rugged place that it had been at before their vacation; right back to a recondite square one. It seemed like any connecting that had been accomplished had all unraveled into a recoiled heap of uncertainty.

You write your first novel with the desperation of the damned. You're afraid that you'll never write anything else, ever again.

About some books we feel that our reluctance to return to them is the true measure of our admiration. It is hard to suppose that many people go back, from a spontaneous desire, to reread 1984: there is neither reason nor need to, no one forgets it. The usual distinctions between forgotten details and a vivid general impression mean nothing here, for the book is written out of one passionate breath, each word is bent to a severe discipline of meaning, everything is stripped to the bareness of terror. Kafka's The Trial is also a book of terror, but it is a paradigm and to some extent a puzzle, so that one may lose oneself in the rhythm of the paradigm and play with the parts of the puzzle. Kafka's novel persuades us that life is inescapably hazardous and problematic, but the very 'universality' of this idea helps soften its impact: to apprehend the terrible on the plane of metaphysics is to lend it an almost soothing aura.

A couple hours went by, and the storm began to turn back to the sea. The dark clouds rolled away, leaving white, fluffy ones in their place. We were safe, and the rock in the distance was still there. We stepped out of the car and walked over to the rock, noticing the families of seals were back again. The seals were strong and ready to make it through any storm that would fall their way. My parents’ love was still there; that is what love means. I envy that love, and I hoped to find it someday... and I did.

After all it was for one justice which is short..., but the journey up to this justice was very long. (Red 2008 Film)

A girl without braids is like a city without bridges.

A good novel can be a doorstop to despair.

A good novel begins with a small question and ends with a bigger one.

A great book increases my heartbeat as if I’m prey, melts my insides in anticipation of a first kiss, immerses me in its depths.

Ah brother, things will be better now. I promise.” Ronan... "Vital Perception

A história de todas as grandes civilizações galácticas tende a passar por três fases distintas e identificáveis: a da Sobrevivência, a da Interrogação e a da Sofisticação, também conhecidas pelas fases Como, Porquê e Onde. Por exemplo, a primeira fase é caracterizada pela pergunta "Como vamos comer?", a segunda pela pergunta "Por que comemos?" e a terceira pela pergunta "Onde vamos almoçar?".

Aku percaya jika setiap hati memiliki bintangnya masing-masing. Yang bersinar terang dan membuat bahagia pemiliknya. Bintang-bintang itu adalah orang yang kita sukai. Namun di antara bintang-bintang tersebut, ada satu bintang yang paling terang. Jauh lebih terang sinarnya dari semua bintang yang ada. Bintang itu adalah pasangan resmi kita.

Aku menyadari semuanya. Kecuali satu, bahwa rasa itu bernama cinta.

Aku tak ragu mengatakan, bersama denganmu walaupun sebatas embusan angin kunamai ia anugrah

All he desired was to have a traumatic experience once in his life. Leukemia did not discriminate.

Alive, and one. We are one, and while we love, death will never touch us. 'The grave's a fine and private place/ but none, I think, do there embrace.

All they told me was that he was forty-two when he died. I just wanted...to find out more about what kind of person he was. I could tell you more, amanda thought to herself. A lot more. She'd suspected the truth since Morgan Tanner had called, and she'd made some calls to confirm her suspicions. Dawson, she'd learned, had been taking off life support at CarolinaEast Regional Medical Center late Monday night. He's been kept alive long after doctors knew he would never recover, because he was an organ donor. Dawson, she knews, had saved Alan's life-but in the end, he'd saved Jared's as well. And for that meant...everything. I gave you the best of me, he'd told her once, and with every beat of her son's heart, she knew he'd done exactly that. How about a quick hug," she said, "before we go inside?" Jared rolled his eyes, but he opened his arms anyway. "I love you, Mom," he mumbled, pulling her close. Amanda closed her eyes, feeling the steady rhythm in his chest. "I love you, too.

All this simply shows us that communalism and terrorism are nothing but opposite sides of the same coin. They keep feeding on each other in a vicious cycle, resulting in a society full of violence, hatred, sorrow and intolerance. Every communal act is used as a justification for mindless acts of terrorism . Similarly , each act of terrorism is used as a justification for such horrible atrocities like genocide and ethnic cleansing. And, it is always the innocent who get killed. This is the sad truth.

A lot of people who read my novel 'Smog City' ask me why I never killed off either of the two main characters. To be honest, it's because I've given them life. Not literally of course, but since I spent so much time developing and creating my characters, they've ended up with complex personalities, in fact they're almost sentient in a way, and to write them off as dead would be like killing a close friend to me.

Although many things may still need to happen before you identify what your exact work will be, I know that every single person whom you’re meeting and every experience that you’re having is necessary to you discovering your purpose. They are points on a map leading you to the moment where a match will finally be lit and you will be able to see through the darkness.