Books Quote by Maggie Shipstead

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

— Zadie Smith

I do find it challenging to leave stuff out. Two of my models for novel-writing are 'The Great Gatsby' and 'As I Lay Dying,'…

— Amy Bloom

Every time I wrote fiction, I was discouraged, and every time I wrote nonfiction, I was encouraged.

— Ron Chernow

A novel is challenging, because you have more story than you need and you have to select and narrow.

— Peter Hedges

I never discuss a novel while I'm writing it, for fear that talking about it will diminish my desire to write it.

— Dean Koontz

Fiction is risky for writers also in that the process of making certain books, of shaping certain narratives, leaves scars and marks on your…

— Chris Abani

The unfolding of a story is both as exciting and as difficult for each and every novel I've written, regardless of time and place.

— Rose Tremain

While writing a novel I almost completely stop reading books in the same sub-genre for the duration.

— Charles Stross

I always worry that knowing too much about a novel or a story early on in writing will close it down - it feels…

— Dan Chaon

But I begin to think the chief difficulty in writing a book must be to keep out what does not belong to it.

— George MacDonald

Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don't then worry about plot or themes. These things will come in…

— Chinua Achebe

But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be…

— Diane Johnson