Books Quote by Donna Tartt

a novel is not born of a single idea. The stories I've tried to write from one idea, no matter how terrific an idea,…

— Katherine Paterson

I tend to describe recurring themes as being part of a writer's DNA - something so deeply embedded in us that even we don't…

— Sara Zarr

Each book, intuitively sensed and, in the case of fiction, intuitively worked out, stands on what has gone before, and grows out of it.

— V. S. Naipaul

Each of my novels has come from a different place, and the processes are not always entirely conscious. I have lived off and on…

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of…

— Eudora Welty

Writing a novel, in an unplanned and unpredictable way, makes you engaged; it takes you into yourself, and it becomes something between you and…

— David Bezmozgis

For me, novels coalesce into being, rather than arrive fully formed.

— David Mitchell

The process is different for every book, but there are similarities. I always draw from the inside out. I don't plot them ahead of…

— Elizabeth Berg

In fact, with each of my novels I have been surprised by something that happens that I had not thought of beforehand.

— Julie Klassen

In my experience, a novel is the culmination of various thoughts and impressions collected over time, until something comes along to give them a…

— J. Courtney Sullivan

The impulse to write a novel comes from a momentary unified vision of life.

— Angus Wilson

“I write well-fleshed out characters, and inevitably, more ideas spring from my subconscious. They all have a little bit of me in them. It’s…

— Faye Kellerman