Novel Quotes
2432 quotes by 1386 authors
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I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn't until I was about 30 that…
— Paul Auster
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Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don't then worry about plot or themes. These things will come in almost…
— Chinua Achebe
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I don't think the relationship between novels and realities are one to one. Of course novels play different roles. It's essentially just a long narrative…
— Margaret Atwood
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I was once a graduate student in Victorian literature, and I believe as the Victorian novelists did, that a novel isn't simply a vehicle for…
— Margaret Atwood
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The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you're opposed to it. But when you're writing a novel, you…
— Margaret Atwood
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There's no lack of writers writing novels in America, about America. Therefore, it seems to me it would be wasteful for me to add to…
— Chinua Achebe
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The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient,…
— Wystan Hugh Auden
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Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at night, but do…
— Wystan Hugh Auden
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The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
— Jane Austen
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For me, a paragraph in a novel is a bit like a line in a poem. It has its own shape, its own music, its…
— Paul Auster
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Movies are not novels, and that's why, when filmmakers try to adapt novels, particularly long or complex novels, the result is almost always failure. It…
— Paul Auster
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I keep thinking I'll enjoy suspense novels, and sometimes I do. I've read about 20 Dick Francis novels.
— Nicholson Baker
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Writing a novel is one of those modern rites of passage, I think, that lead us from an innocent world of contentment, drunkenness, and good…
— J. G. Ballard
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The novel is resilient, and so are novelists.
— John Banville
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I feel like my brain is more geared towards a novel than it is to a movie.
— Kate Beckinsale
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At Oxford University, I studied languages so I could read the great novels as they were originally written. I took what in the United States…
— Kate Beckinsale
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A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life.
— Saul Bellow
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The novels I love, the ones I remember, the ones I re-read, have an empathetic human quality, or 'emotional truth'. This quality is difficult to…
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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Words are so often used in the opposite sense, as a screen of diversion. It's the struggle towards truthfulness which is the same whether one…
— John Berger
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I'm skeptical that the novel will be 're-invented.'
— Jeff Bezos
Who Wrote These Novel Quotes
1,386 authors contributed a total of 2,432 Novel Quotes, led by these top contributors: