Books Quote by Dan Chaon

A novel requires a certain kind of world building and also a certain kind of closure, ultimately. Whereas with a short story you have…

— Dan Chaon

The end of secrecy would be the end of the novel - especially the English novel. The English novel requires social secrecy, personal secrecy.

— Ian Mcewan

However appalling to consider, however tedious to enact, every novel requires furniture, whether it is to be named or unnamed, for the characters will…

— Jonathan Lethem

My first job is to write a book that I believe is compelling and deserves the long sustained attention that any novel requires, and…

— Joshua Ferris

I really need so much time to really make headway on a novel that requires me to disappear from the world in a way.

— Laura van den Berg

Fiction -- at least for me -- requires long, relatively uninterrupted time stretches in which to bring it to fruition. I've never been a…

— Samuel R. Delany

A novel, even a social realist one, can't simply be a comprehensive rendering of what is. A novel requires a special angle or approach,…

— Chang-Rae Lee

“A novel requires a hero, and here there's a deliberate collection of all the traits for an anti-hero”

— Dostoyevsky, Fyodor

To read a novel requires a certain kind of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two…

— Philip Roth

“We leave such a trail of bodies through our teens and twenties that it's hard to tell which one is us. How many versions…

— Dan Chaon

I would say that all short stories have mystery naturally built into them.

— Dan Chaon

“Lesson Learned: When you give away a short story, even if it's free, make sure you tell people that it is a short story!”

— Julius St. Clair