I started writing short stories. I tried writing horror, mystery, science fiction. I joined a little critique group here in town and… — James Rollins Copy Share Image
Roughly, the action of a character should be unpredictable before it has been shown, inevitable when it has been shown. In the… — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
“You stupid fool, you know very well it's not a short novel, but something longer...A piece of work you've got to buckle… — Iván Mándy Copy Share Image
I think books in which people are really happy and things are going well are probably the most challenging novels there are… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
I believe that the memoir is the novel of the 21st century; it’s an amazing form that we haven’t even begun to… — Susan Cheever Copy Share Image
I got this idea of doing a really serious big work-it would be precisely like a novel, with a single difference: Every… — Truman Capote Copy Share Image
I have never started a novel - I mean except the first, when I was starting a novel just to start a… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Writing a novel was completely awesome because parts of it could suck and I could throw them away. I didn't have to… — Austin Grossman Copy Share Image
I was obsessed with fairytales, and I was a very, very inquisitive kid, and I would ask my mom all kinds of… — Chris Colfer Copy Share Image
The idea that a book can advise a woman how to capture a man is touchingly naive. Books advising men how to… — Roger Ebert Copy Share Image
A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
The novel is a formidable mass, and it is so amorphous - no mountain in it to climb, no Parnassus or Helicon,… — Anonymous Copy Share Image
The point is, that the function of the novel seems to be changing; it has become an outpost of journalism; we read… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Relationship means something complete, finished, closed. Love is never a relationship; love is relating. It is always a river, flowing, unending. Love… — Rajneesh Copy Share Image
When you take a child who's hollering like hell, sit him on your knee, and say "once upon a time", you stop… — William Golding Copy Share Image
At Princeton I wrote my junior paper on Virginia Woolf, and for my senior thesis I wrote on Samuel Beckett. I wrote… — David Duchovny Copy Share Image
Working on a novel is very solitary and I get to be the boss. I'm the dictator, so I win every battle.… — Nicholas Sparks Copy Share Image
Asking the director of 'The Lord of the Rings' to read my novel was exactly as terrifying as you'd think. I came… — Jeff Giles Copy Share Image
All my novels are very much directly related to my inner life, even though I'm inventing characters, even though it's fiction, even… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
In everything I've written, the crime has always just been an occasion to write about other things. I don't have a picture… — Peter Temple Copy Share Image
I never even considered writing a career option. I just liked the play of words. I was certainly interested in story, but… — Charles de Lint Copy Share Image
You can get rid of the column. It's a little like staying at a hotel; you get used to the shape of… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
The characters in my novels, from the very first one, are always on some quixotic effort of attempting to control something that… — John Irving Copy Share Image
I really do believe that people surprise you. And one of the powerful things about novels is that they're about characters, and… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
I can only write one novel at a time. The author of the Perry Mason novels, Erle Stanley Gardner, often worked on… — James Thayer Copy Share Image
“Millions cheer the warrior spilling blood across the ring while the one who stands for peace is ridiculed and shamed. Must hearts… — Aberjhani Copy Share Image
My writerly aspirations are pretty simple: to provide as many readers as possible with the same sort of wonderful immersion that I… — Saladin Ahmed Copy Share Image
In March of 2001, I revisited the short story, and found that thought it did not work well as a short story,… — Khaled Hosseini Copy Share Image
My first two novels were set in the past, and that freed me up in a lot of ways; it allowed me… — Jennifer Gilmore Copy Share Image
The novel succeeds on terms exclusive to literature. A good film succeeds on terms exclusive to the cinema. That's why so many… — Alexander Payne Copy Share Image
it is wrong to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences... but it is right to chide man for being… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
You don't want to dwell on your enemies, you know. I basically feel so superior to my critics for the simple reason… — John Irving Copy Share Image
I think one of the primary goals of a feminist landscape architecture would be to work toward a public landscape in which… — Rebecca Solnit Copy Share Image
A reader, encountering a sentence about a barking dog, would have to dwell on why that choice was made at that moment.… — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share Image
In our own state, we came up with, I think, what was a very novel approach to closing the gap on the… — Jon Huntsman, Jr Copy Share Image
A journalist also needs to be disciplined, and so do I. I am, essentially, lazy. Without discipline I'd be just a mass… — Louise Penny Copy Share Image
“When he spoke of love, it was in the manner of someone who can recite a phrase in a foreign language but… — Roy L. Pickering Jr Copy Share Image
“The two weary but still talkative wizards sat in a pair of fan-backed chairs and pitched pebbles at the drunken satyr in… — John Bellairs Copy Share Image
“Entering a novel is like going on a climb in the mountains: you have to learn the rhythm of respiration, acquire the… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
The Chicago Way is a wonderful first novel. Michael Harvey has studied the masters and put his own unique touch on the… — Michael Connelly Copy Share Image