Books Quote by Katherine Paterson

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

Before you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough.

— Joyce Carol Oates

I realise that it is fashionable now to dismiss the traditional novel as something of an anachronism, but to me it is still a…

— Paule Marshall

I believe a novel should be as complicated and involved as you're capable of making it.

— John Irving

Novels seem to exist because of this need to know and connect, and so story becomes charged with necessity.

— Michael Helm

The novel doesn't come into existence until certain methods of reproducing fiction come along.

— Leslie Fiedler

We live in a sea of general ideas, so that's not a novel, since there are so many general ideas. But the moment a…

— Chinua Achebe

It's hard enough to make a novel a novel. I wouldn't know how to make it something else at the same time

— Matthew Specktor

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

I don't read novels that are looking to convince me of anything. I believe that literature needs to be a machine of illusions.

— Sergio Chejfec

The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.

— Henry James

What we know about writing the novel is the novel.

— Eudora Welty