Books Quote by Howard Jacobson

Novel writing is a kind of private pleasure, even if nothing comes of it in worldly terms.

— Barbara Pym

A novelist writes a novel, and people read it. But reading is a solitary act. While it may elicit a varied and personal response,…

— August Wilson

Reading a novel of a private experience, very, very different, the nature of it is very different.

— Sydney Pollack

A novel and its writer are inseparable: you are your books. A play's not like that at all. 'Abandonment's not mine - it's everyone's.…

— Kate Atkinson

There's a perception that novels can't usually allow for your kind of absolute attention to detail.

— Zadie Smith

Reading is, at its best, not an escape; it is genuine experience. A novel is not a monologue, but a conversation, a collaboration between…

— Jonathan Evison

I do think there's a relationship between a book and a reader that's more intimate, in many ways, than the relationship between an audience…

— Sarah Ruhl

A reader should encounter themselves in a novel, I think.

— Mohsin Hamid

“Every writer is first a member of a community of readers, and the deepest purpose of reading and writing fiction is to sustain a…

— Jonathan Franzen

Novels are nothing but evolution, but there does come a point when that stops, and the story is sealed within the pages of the…

— Sarah Waters

Wonderful thing about novels is that sometimes we read a novel and we know the person in the novel more than we know people…

— Edwidge Danticat

I was once a graduate student in Victorian literature, and I believe as the Victorian novelists did, that a novel isn't simply a vehicle…

— Margaret Atwood