Novel Quotes · Page 43

An idea you have might not be original. But by creating a novel out of that idea you can make it original.

— Umberto Eco

The incredible stability in inflation is really a novel human experience. And the inflation is being the result of money.

— Russ Roberts

More often than not, real life is so rich, complex and unpredictable that it would seem completely implausible in the pages of…

— Candice Millard

In addition to psychopaths, 'Quantum Night' is also a novel about literally thoughtless people, without inner voices, thoughts in their heads.

— Robert J. Sawyer

Middlemarch, the magnificent book which with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels for grown-up people.

— Virginia Woolf

I don't yet know what style will be required for my next novel, but my sense is that each book will involve…

— Vivek Shraya

Reading a novel in which all characters illustrate patience, hard work, chastity, and delayed gratification could be a pretty dull experience.

— Thomas Perry

The only justification for writing a novel is that it should be wonderful. Adequate is inadequate.

— Janet Burroway

I feel that Pride and Prejudice is an incredibly well constructed novel on every level. The dialogue is great. The character development…

— Curtis Sittenfeld

I think of my books now as suspense novels, usually with a love story incorporated. They're absolutely a lot harder to write…

— Sandra Brown

The essential gesture of the contemporary novel is to get people to turn the page, to entertain them, and I hate that.…

— David Shields

In all my stories and novels, no one ever escapes Louisiana. Maybe that is because my soul never left Louisiana, although my…

— Ernest Gaines

There was an ITV television production of the second novel I wrote, called 'Murder of Quality.' It was a little murder story…

— John le Carre

Im sick of the foodies who need every morsel that goes into their mouth to be a Picasso painting, a Giacometti sculpture,…

— Jessi Klein

When a novel has 200,000 words, then it is possible for the reader to experience 200,000 delights, and to turn back to…

— Jane Smiley

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

There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge.…

— Hunter S. Thompson

I've always listened to music while I write, but none of my work has been so directly impacted by a song as…

— Michael Koryta

I went and looked at one of these great cathedrals one day, and I was blown away by it. From there I…

— Ken Follett

I don't like to think in terms of writing ten or twelve pages a day. Usually I'm writing a scene, and it's…

— Robert Cormier

I think not in two or three dimensional terms but in five dimensional terms when I consider a novel. There's height, width,…

— Richard Grossman

Dialogue that is written in dialect is very tiring to read. If you can do it brilliantly, fine. If other writers read…

— Anne Lamott

I'm always reading many books at a time. It might be quite unorthodox, but what I do is, since I'm always surrounded…

— Daphne Guinness

Maybe it goes without saying that if you want to become a famous writer before you’re dead, you’ll have to write something.…

— Ariel Gore

Every movie is a road movie. Every novel is a mystery. Every tortilla chip is sacred.

— Sherman Alexie

Readers of novels are a strange folk, upon whose probable or even possible tastes no wise book-maker would ever venture to bet.

— E. V. Lucas

'Constructed Worlds' comes from a novel draft that I wrote in my early twenties and reread/revised only in my late thirties.

— Elif Batuman

You write your first novel with the desperation of the damned. You're afraid that you'll never write anything else, ever again.

— Patricia Duncker

Novels give you the matrix of emotions, give you the flavour of a time in a way formal history cannot.

— Doris Lessing

Screenwriting is a much more collaborative effort. When you write a novel, it's just you, with input from your editor.

— Meg Cabot

It was my angry, Dickensian novel, I suppose. It was cathartic - I expended a lot of frustration on that one.

— Richard Helms

I was elated when I found out my first novel, 'Leaving Patrick,' about a woman who walks out on her husband, was…

— Prue Leith

I hate the word juicy in describing anything: lips, plots, oranges. But especially novels. It feels - icky. Reminds me of saliva.

— Lauren Grodstein

I don't think the 'what' distinguishes a good novel from a bad one but rather the 'how.'

— Joseph Heller

[ Adult novels] was the world of grownups. There was nothing about teenagers.

— Judy Blume

I have to read comic books all first, because now when you get into graphic novels, they are definitely in deep graphic.

— Virginia Madsen

I have always held to the theory that too much chalk may be just as bad for a novel as for a…

— Heywood Broun

In real life, things don't all end at the nice same place. To keep the story real, there has to be kind…

— Robin Hobb

Find me a first novel that doesn't have parallels with the author's life.

— Sophie Dahl

As you know, transforming such a big book [The Gunslinger Born] into graphic novel format is really a process of translation.

— Robin Furth