Books Quote by Jonathan Coe

I never plot out my novels in terms of the tone of the book. Hopefully, once a story is begun it reveals itself

— Alice Hoffman

What I couldn't help noticing was that I learned more about the novel in a morning by trying to write a page of one…

— Philip Pullman

I don't really consider myself a novelist, it just came out purely by accident.

— Wole Soyinka

The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don't consider myself a novelist.

— Wole Soyinka

In a novel, you can always go back and make it look like you knew what you were doing all along before the thing…

— Neil Gaiman

The impact of any particular writer on your own work is hard to discern.

— Daniel Alarcon

I had written a book. For various reasons, the publishing industry had decided that my book was going to be 'important.' The novel had…

— Akhil Sharma

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

— Julie Klassen

Only another writer can know how much damage writing a novel can do to you. It's an unnatural activity to sit at a desk…

— Norman Mailer

I'd never written a novel before, and I wrote a novel, and that turned out OK.

— Rainbow Rowell

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

— Zadie Smith

I was mainly in a state of nervousness while I wrote it - nervousness that it was far bigger and more complicated than anything…

— Jonathan Coe