Books Quote by Elizabeth Bowen

A novel which survives, which withstands and outlives time, does do something more than merely survive. It does not stand still. It accumulates round…

— Elizabeth Bowen

I do not share the pessimism of the age about the novel. They are one of our greatest spiritual, aesthetic and intellectual inventions. As…

— Richard Flanagan

It seems to me that the novel is very much alive as a form. Without any question, every epoch has its own forms, and…

— Ilya Ehrenburg

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

I believe that written stories will continue to survive because they answer an essential human need. I think movies might disappear before the novel…

— Jonathan Lethem

“Most novels, if they are successful at all, are original in the sense that they report the existence of an area of society, a…

— Doris Lessing

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

Another thing I learned is that novels, even those from apparently distant times and places, remain current and enlightening, and also comforting.

— Jane Smiley

the days of our lives vanish utterly, more insubstantial than if they had been invented. Fiction can seem more enduring than reality.

— Penelope Lively

“People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or…

— G.K. Chesterton

People have been saying the novel is dead for as far back as I can remember. The novel will never die, but it will…

— Rosamond Lehmann

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