Novel Quotes · Page 21

“Good listeners always hear something novel”

— S.E. SEVER

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

— Richard Whately

A novel is a machine for generating interpretations.

— Umberto Eco

The devil is always discovering something novel against the truth.

— Pope Leo I

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

— Steven Ramirez

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

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

— Michael J. Kannengieser

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

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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

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

— Lady Violet

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

— Anonymous

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

— Alan Lightman

He was a guy who talked with commas, like a heavy novel. Over the phone anyway.

— Raymond Chandler

I think graphic novels are closer to prose than film, which is a really different form.

— Denise Mina

No Way Back is my kind of novel - a tough, taut thriller - Mofina knows the world he writes about.

— Michael Connelly

“There’s no better way to get to know a city than to walk its streets. A place will reveal its soul through…

— Henry Mosquera

If you study your own struggles, the struggles of others, even in movies or novels you'll see the root of all their…

— Yasmin Mogahed

With every sentence she writes, Davis freshens the senses. Her novels achieve a tone that’s unlike anyone else’s, creating an atmosphere you…

— Kevin Brockmeier

Usually I read biographies of interesting people. I am not attracted to novels - make-believe, or recreations of what people think life…

— Lee Kuan Yew

I don't know how it is with other writers, but most of the time when I finish [reading] a story or novel,…

— F. Paul Wilson

“... the old Berlin – last vestige of a mysterious fête – wheeled away from the gravelled road and went lurching noiselessly…

— Alain-Fournier

I think what happens to young writers is that they use up every life experience that they have had up to that…

— Lee Smith

I was heavily influenced by my first attempt at a novel. I started a fantasy novel back in high school, and... well...…

— Patrick Rothfuss

Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles is a novel that I have read over and over and over again. Tess is a…

— Laetitia Casta

Irving Wallace wrote a bestselling novel, The Man, in the 1960s about a black man becoming president of the United States. We…

— Wayne Dyer

At the risk, then, of being shunned by some of my gloomier peers, I venture to tell you that writers work like…

— Michael Cunningham

Not all coincidence has to be loaded with meaning. Sometimes, things simply recur because that's how it is in life, that's how…

— Teju Cole

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

“It was just a word. It took nothing from him. It made him feel only as low as he allowed himself to…

— Roy L. Pickering Jr

“Here’s the truth: I am the female version of a heartbreaker. The one that everyone says is too dedicated to ballet, too…

— Katherine Owen

In his scintillating new novel, Matt Bondurant explores a crucial period in the history of Virginia and of his family. His gorgeous,…

— Margot Livesey

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

— Russell Smith

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

— Louise Brown

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

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

— Joan Didion

My novel, 'Kingdom of Scars', is a coming-of-age story.

— Eoin Macken

I know some writers that have a million novel ideas, but I don't.

— Laura van den Berg

To keep an active mind, I find that reading novels is really good.

— Alison Pill