Books Quote by Henry James

We trust to novels to train us in the practice of great indignations and great generosity.

— Henry James

“Behind every novel is a greater story of how it came to be published.”

— T.L. Rese

“I think long and carefully about what novels ought to do. They should clarify the roles that have become obscured; they ought to identify…

— Toni Morrison

“Eventually, we come to love certain novels because we have expended so much imaginative labor on them. This is why we hang on to…

— Orhan Pamuk

“Novels should reflect reality to some extent, otherwise they risk being sentimental.”

— Marc Levy

“... we read novels because they give us the comfortable sensation of living in worlds where the notion of truth is indisputable, while the…

— Umberto Eco

“It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure we derive from the best books. They impress us with the conviction, that one nature wrote…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Novels can tell us so much about life. They have the power to enrich our own lives in so many different ways. They're not…

— Victoria Connelly

“To write an excellent novel, make the outcome of the story matter to the reader through the evolving relationships between well-designed characters.”

— Martin Sandforth

“There seems a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labor of the novelist, and of slighting performances which have only genius,…

— Jane Austen

“Fiction, at the point of development at which it has arrived, demands from the writer a spirit of scrupulous abnegation.The only legitimate of all…

— Joseph Conrad

“...Novels--which, after all, are training grounds for responding to the world, imaginative sanctuaries in which to hone and test our ethical judgments and choices.”

— William Deresiewicz