I used to read only fiction. Now I don't read much, only occasionally, such as a Cormac McCarthy or a Jim Harrison… — David Quammen Copy Share Image
Goon Squad' took about three years to write and that's the short end. My second novel, 'Look at Me,' took six years. — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
A novel is like a sausage. You might like the final taste but you don't want to see how it was made. — Harlan Coben Copy Share Image
It's really hard to be a story writer - no matter how much acclaim you get - and not write a novel. — David Means Copy Share Image
And it is a folly to try to craft a novel for the screen, to write a novel with a screen contract… — Thomas Keneally Copy Share Image
As for writing about temptation, there's no drama without temptation, and no novel without drama. — Tom Perrotta Copy Share Image
“And so the bird was the end of the man, and the man was the beginning of the bird.” — Anonymous Copy Share Image
A novel is challenging, because you have more story than you need and you have to select and narrow. — Peter Hedges Copy Share Image
I've never seen novels as built things. I have a tendency to see them as found things so that I always feel… — Stephen King Copy Share Image
The novel is about five students of classics who are studying with a classics professor, and they take the ideas of the… — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
Inspiration is everywhere - film, television, newspapers, novels, overheard conversations, whatever you can tap into. It's out there, and I've been at… — Kasey Anderson Copy Share Image
We all have a lot of people inside us, yet we get to live only one life. Fiction lets us slip into… — Steven Saylor Copy Share Image
“What is novel is a president who wishes to maintain, while in office, a personal security force which during his campaign used… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
In an episodic treatment, such as a teleplay is, you have the ability to do what you can do in a novel,… — John Irving Copy Share Image
I didn't feel the need for anonymous affection, for people in the dark applauding. To me, it would be like writing a… — Tom Lehrer Copy Share Image
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… — Elvis Costello Copy Share Image
Writing a novel was like I had some Play-Doh to work with and could just keep working with it - doing a… — Miranda July Copy Share Image
The funniest novel you've never read. . . . Afternoon Men is a revelation to sophisticated readers of every stripe, but especially… — Blake Bailey Copy Share Image
Jeremy Popkin's collection of first-person narratives of the Haitian Revolution is an extremely valuable work, accessible, sound and intelligent. I only wish… — Madison Smartt Bell Copy Share Image
I am the suburb of a non-existent town, the prolix commentary on a book never written. I am nobody, nobody. I am… — Fernando Pessoa Copy Share Image
Certainly the determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and novel impulse struggling… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
I know California isn't a real destination. You can't get there from New Jersey, not simply by following a line drawn on… — Kate Braverman Copy Share Image
I don't feel I write fast. I write in longhand and do so much revision. On the page, it's so old-fashioned. I… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks.… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
Just as the camera draws a stake through the heart of serious portraiture, television has killed the novel of social reportage. — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
One of my favorite comic books of all-time is the graphic novel 'God Loves, Man Kills.' — Cheo Hodari Coker Copy Share Image
When I read 'Watchmen,' it changed my view of so many things. It was the first time I'd read a graphic novel… — Joel Silver Copy Share Image
I wasn't that into crime novels at all, but a friend introduced me to the work of Jim Thompson - I loved… — Jo Nesbo Copy Share Image
A publisher many years ago asked if I'd like to write a novel for £50. And I said, 'Absolutely.' — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
I was satisfied with haiku until I met you, but now I want a Russian novel, a 50-page description of you sleeping. — Dean Young Copy Share Image
It is quite beneath the dignity of a person holding a Bachelor of Arts degree to engage in such a vulgar occupation… — Fukuzawa Yukichi Copy Share Image
Novels are fictions and therefore they tell lies, but through those lies every novelist attempts to tell the truth about the world. — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
I've written 16 children's books and five unpublished novels. Some of the latter were breathtakingly bad. — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
Just about everybody has written a first novel that they throw away before writing their actual first novel. — Daniel Handler Copy Share Image
I prefer all but the very worst travel books, to all but the very best novels. — Evelyn Waugh Copy Share Image
In a novel, the only budgetary limitations are that of your imagination. — Howard Gordon Copy Share Image
Jayne Anne Phillips . . . is at the height of her powers in Lark and Termite. . . . This is… — Robert Olen Butler Copy Share Image
A novel is really like a symphony where instrument after instrument has to come in at its own time, and no other. — Katherine Anne Porter Copy Share Image
When I am writing novels I don't read a lot of novels so I try to catch up in-between. — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life. — Henry James Copy Share Image
