Novel Quotes · Page 31

My second novel, "Good Benito", was not finished. I wished that I had spent another year with it.

— Alan Lightman

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

— Anonymous

First electricity, now telephones. Sometimes I feel as if I'm living in an H.G. Wells novel.

— Lady Violet

Writing a novel that works is an extremely difficult thing to do. It requires a level of skill and dedication that always…

— Bret Easton Ellis

I never plan my novels because if I know what is going to happen, it bores me rigid. I let the story…

— James Herbert

My first crime novel, "Wild Horses," sold at auction, and that changed my life at an ideal time.

— Brian Hodge

It would be easier to write a novel without reader input, but I feel the fiction is richer for it.

— Piers Anthony

I give people 'If You Came Softly' when they demand proof that novels for teens can be as good as the best…

— Justine Larbalestier

I've been associated with Macmillan for over 45 years. I'd like to thank them for their continued commitment to my backlist and…

— Wilbur Smith

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…

— Dennis Cooper

Each of my novels features a protagonist undertaking a difficult personal journey. On the way, each of these characters - mostly female…

— Juliet Marillier

The critic interested in a novel manifestation holds his criteria and taste in reserve. Since they were formed upon yesterday's art, he…

— Leo Steinberg

“Do we really mean it when we say ‘in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, until death do us…

— Deirdre-Elizabeth Parker

What I love is how pissed off Jane Eyre is. She's in a rage for the whole novel and the payoff is…

— Francine Prose

I'd been assured, at age 21 or so, by a well-known editor who saw the first part of The Secret History in…

— Donna Tartt

My books are based on emotions, feelings, relationships. In these areas women are experts, so it's not strange that the main characters…

— Isabel Allende

“Kayla,' I exclaim. 'There may be bad police officers out there, but I can assure you that there will be no harm…

— Simi Sunny

When I need to take a side, I write a newspaper article and I tell my government, "You should not do that,…

— Amos Oz

In adopting the form of the adventure novel, Wells deepened it, raised its intellectual value, and brought into it elements of social…

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

There are people already sharing eBooks out there, .. and they do it simply because they love books. You don't buy a…

— Cory Doctorow

And she understood, all by herself, without reading it in a novel or hearing it on a radio program, that falling passionately…

— Paulette Jiles

I don't impose political responsibilities on my fiction. The last thing I would ever want to do, for example, is write a…

— Francisco Goldman

I've written one book-length piece of journalism. The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed Bishop Gerardi? That book had an impact. Eight…

— Francisco Goldman

Something we do know is that review coverage does go to male authors more than women authors. That's a fact. I think…

— Emma Donoghue

Nonfiction, to me, feels like an argument, whereas a novel is like a series of questions.

— Sheila Heti

I try to stick with what moves me or teaches me about myself, same thing I hope the novels do for others.

— Wally Lamb

I never get used to it, the unknowable mystery of a person so suddenly, totally closed, snapped shut like a half-read novel.

— Linda Barnes

I think with 'Chunky Rice,' it felt novel to me to give this emo twist on these funny animals.

— Craig Thompson

In the long term, you have to believe that movies and TV shows will be like the opera and the novel, pretty…

— Reed Hastings

In most novels, the landscape, or the place, in which the story takes part is simply a backdrop to the human action.

— Paul Kingsnorth

People who wrote literary novels about the past probably didn't want them pegged as historical fiction. Certainly that was true in England.

— Hilary Mantel

I keep waiting for the day in which everyone who loves 'Downton Abbey' will realize they were actually watching a historical romance…

— Julia Quinn

The graphic novel form really interests me and I like the freedom that format offers.

— Walter Hill

I don't think you can tell the objective truth about a person. That's why people write novels.

— A. N. Wilson

I would like to do a novel where some curse turns that into how the world really is - a blessing or…

— Robert Sheckley

You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It's all there and you just…

— Thomas Harris

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

— Park Chan-wook

My novels are high concept. I guess big ideas interest me more than, say, the minutiae of domestic life.

— Scarlett Thomas

We've been hearing about the death of the novel ever since the day after Don Quixote was published.

— Jay McInerney

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

— Dana Spiotta