Novel Quotes · Page 20

“If you’d saved the girl, you’d be a hero. Next time.”

— Steven Ramirez

“Good listeners always hear something novel”

— S.E. SEVER

It's not in good taste to have talking ghosts in a grown-up novel.

— Zadie Smith

A certain class of novels may with propriety be called fables.

— Richard Whately

The devil is always discovering something novel against the truth.

— Pope Leo I

A novel is a machine for generating interpretations.

— Umberto Eco

If you like my novels, I commend your good taste.

— Rita Mae Brown

I wish I could spend six years writing one novel.

— Paullina Simons

When I start writing a novel, I have no sense of direction, no idea, really nothing.

— William Gibson

A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality.

— Milan Kundera

I envy those writers who outline their novels, who know where they're going. But I find writing is a process of discovery.

— Jay McInerney

Romance novels satisfy a very specific fantasy of romantic love that seems to be a powerful part of the female psyche.

— Melissa Pritchard

If I'm hanging around too much, my wife and kids say, 'Hey, why don't you go downstairs and start a new novel?'

— Nick Cave

The novel [The Kite Runner] came about as an expansion of that original, unpublished short story.

— Khaled Hosseini

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

— John Steinbeck

That seems to be the definition of 'novel' for me: a story that hasn't yet discovered a way to be brief.

— George Saunders

I was in school for literature, and read so many 19th century and early 20th century novels that it was hard to…

— Colin Meloy

“I've come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created…

— Atul Purohit

Graphic novels are not traditional literature, but that does not mean they are second-rate. Images are a way of writing. When you…

— Marjane Satrapi

We have learned in recent years to translate almost all of political life in terms of conspiracy. And the spy novel, as…

— John le Carre

Maybe they'll start making serialized movies. I watched the first couple seasons of '24' and it's really fun. I bought the DVD…

— Jeremy Sisto

The novel is like a melancholy form. It's about some kind of disillusionment with the way things are versus the idea of…

— Elif Batuman

The novel that's contemporary in the sense of being wholly 'of now' is an impossibility, if only because novels may take years…

— Graham Swift

The joy of poetry is that it will wait for you. Novels don't wait for you. Characters change. But poetry will wait.…

— Sonia Sanchez

This progressive effacement of human relationships is not without certain problems for the novel. How, in point of fact, would one handle…

— Michel Houellebecq

“Monk worked on his remaining Intertect cases at his dining table while I tried to hone my detecting instincts by reading the…

— Lee Goldberg

Hwang Jung-eun is one of the brightest stars of the new South Korean generation - she's Han Kang's favourite, and the novel…

— Deborah Smith

We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And…

— John Steinbeck

One measures oncoming old age by its deepening of Proust, and its deepening by Proust. How to read a novel? Lovingly, if…

— Harold Bloom

Respect can be as elusive as the unicorn. I know something of this because I write books that are set in the…

— Sharon Kay Penman

Music's always part of my writing. I think all art is interconnected. You can't create or experience one without its influences bleeding…

— Charles de Lint

Unless a writer lives with a periodic delusion of his greatness, he will not continue writing. He must believe, against all reason…

— Leonard Bishop

No novel has ever changed anything, as far as I can see.

— Martin Amis

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

— Tracy Kidder

The novel is just fine: It's novelists who aren't doing so well.

— Russell Smith

“Writing a novel is easy… writing checks is hard.”

— Michael J. Kannengieser

I'm working on a nonfiction book on Nepal and a novel about diasporas.

— Louise Brown

I'm not sure I have the physical strength to undertake a novel.

— Joan Didion

A good novel is worth more then the best scientific study.

— Saul Bellow

“Surround yourself with what matters.”

— HLBalcomb