The most common human act that writing a novel resembles…

The most common human act that writing a novel resembles is lying. The working novelist lies daily, very complexly and at great length. If…

— William Gibson

The thought of the novelist lies not in the remarks of his characters or even in their introspection but in the plight he has…

— Philip Roth

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

— William Gibson

To make it interesting and worth doing, writing a novel has to be a leap into the unknown. I have to be unsure if…

— Charles Palliser

Writing one's first novel, getting it sold, and shepherding it through the labyrinths of editing, production, marketing, journalism, and social media is an arduous…

— Paul Di Filippo

The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.

— Ernest Hemingway

Then I decided I would spend the summer writing a novel. That would fix a lot of people.

— Sylvia Plath

“I'm going to write a novel and get it published. I'm going to do it because writing a novel is worthwhile and because I…

— Randy Ingermanson

When I was writing my first novel, 'Where the Line Bleeds,' which had young black men as its main characters, I was very invested…

— Jesmyn Ward

One of the most difficult things in writing a novel or anything at all is to choose the point of view from which it's…

— Truman Capote

Having been an editor for more than a decade, I thought I had a good idea of how much work was involved in writing…

— Julie Klassen

After 20 years of writing academic prose and lectures, it seems very familiar and straightforward to me. Writing a novel for the first time,…

— Deborah Harkness

If you're writing a novel, you're in a room for three or four years. There's not much coming in from the outside.

— Mordecai Richler

When you're writing a novel, you spend four years sitting in your basement and a year waiting for the book to come out and…

— John Green

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. —W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM”

— Wendy Wax