Books Quote by Nicola Griffith

“A writer is bound to have varying degrees of success, and I think that that is partly an issue of how central the burden…

— John Hersey

“Writing a novel mimics what we bring to our journey of life. God is the great editor who purges the faulty, the awkward, and…

— Denise M. Baran-Unland

“The inexperienced reader wants the essentially familiar combined with superficial novelty. Each story must have a slightly new setting or twist or "gimmick," though…

— Laurence Perrine

“The most exciting part of writing a novel is when the characters take control of the story”

— Brandt Legg

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

— Peter Hedges

“What's remarkable about fiction is that it places you in the unusual position of having no trajectory. You stand aside, motives abandoned for the…

— Tom Rachman

“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

“We do need to bring to our writing, over and over again, all the abundance we possess. To be able, to be ready, to…

— Eudora Welty

“One has to be just a little crazy to write a great novel”

— John Gardner

In literature only trouble is interesting. It takes trouble to turn the great themes of life into a story: birth, love, sex, work, and…

— Janet Burroway

The novel form is about the protagonist's struggle to transform his arbitrary, fragmented, given experience into a narrative as meaningful as his favorite books.

— Elif Batuman

Novels are one of the few remaining areas of narrative storytelling where one person does almost all of the creative heavy lifting.

— Charles Stross