Agony Quote by Chaim Potok

My own feeling is that the only possible reason for engaging in the hard labor of writing a novel, is that one is bothered…

— May Sarton

But my philosophy is that plot advancement is not what the experience of reading fiction is about. If all we care about is advancing…

— Anonymous

With a novel, you have to have a story. It's much more important to have it matter to the reader what happens to people,…

— Dave Barry

The process of writing a novel is like taking a journey by boat. You have to continually set yourself on course. If you get…

— Walter Mosley

When I write my novels I don't really have a huge plan beforehand; I don't have the whole plot and architecture, so the story…

— Michael Ondaatje

Writing a novel isn't like building a brick wall. You don't figure out how to do it, and then it gets easier each time…

— Kate DiCamillo

Usually I work out the plot before I start. This time I thought: Writers always talk about not knowing where a book is going…

— Daniel Kehlmann

When you get ready to write your novel, outline it first. There's nothing worse than getting halfway through and realizing you've painted yourself in…

— Janet Evanovich

I knew I wanted to write novels, but I could not finish what I started. The closer I got, the more ways I'd find…

— Steven Pressfield

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

I never, ever decided that I had to write a novel because, to me, there's no such decision that ought to be made. It's…

— Arundhati Roy

I have never started a novel - I mean except the first, when I was starting a novel just to start a novel -…

— Joan Didion