Air Quote by Anonymous

A novel wouldn't be a book if there weren't some flights of fancy on the part of the author, stopping time to examine things,…

— Ned Vizzini

A novel ensures that we can look before and after, take action at whatever pace we choose, read again and again, skip and go…

— William Golding

It's not easy to craft a novel that gradually erodes the reader's comprehension of the world, of reality and identity and the passage of…

— Laura van den Berg

Every novel is like this, desperation, a frustrated attempt to save something of the past. Except that it still has not been established whether…

— Jose Saramago

The writer has to take risks and go somewhere full of mystery and possibility for the novel to deepen over the years it takes…

— Dana Spiotta

A novel is a way to rethink and rewrite and re-envision the past, and also a way to speak to people who haven't been…

— Emily Barton

To me, novels are a trip of discovery, and you discover things that you don't know and you assume that many of your readers…

— Tom Wolfe

“Novel writing is mostly triage (this now, that later) and obstinacy. Trying something, and when that doesn't work, trying something else. Welcoming clutter Surrendering…

— Richard Russo

There's a practical problem about time and energy, and a more subtle problem of what it does to a writer's head, to continually analyze…

— Kazuo Ishiguro

When a writer tries to explain too much, he's out of time before he begins.

— Isaac Bashevis Singer

“Eventually, we come to love certain novels because we have expended so much imaginative labor on them. This is why we hang on to…

— Orhan Pamuk

“Entering a novel is like going on a climb in the mountains: you have to learn the rhythm of respiration, acquire the pace; otherwise…

— Umberto Eco