Arguing Quote by Sergio Chejfec

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

I love novels where not much 'happens' but where the interest is in the ideas and analyses of characters.

— Alain de Botton

“(A novel is) a paper where your thesis is that these people are real, and you have to prove it.”

— Maggie Stiefvater

A novel, even a social realist one, can't simply be a comprehensive rendering of what is. A novel requires a special angle or approach,…

— Chang-Rae Lee

There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction.

— Edgar Allan Poe

To me, novels are a trip of discovery, and you discover things that you don't know and you assume that many of your readers…

— Tom Wolfe

I know some writers that have a million novel ideas, but I don't.

— Laura van den Berg

I start with theory rather than people. I don't like novels which have no theoretical or philosophical underpinning. I hate the contemporary novel where…

— Neel Mukherjee

I don't very often read novels.

— Sidney Poitier

“Their books are also different. Works of fiction contain a single plot, with all its imaginable permutations. Those of a philosophical nature invariably include…

— Jorge Luis Borges

I write the novels that are possible for me to write, not that ones I think will come across in a certain light.

— Rachel Kushner

“…Here we come close to one of the definitions of literary fiction. Even the best kind of popular novel just comes straight at you;…

— Martin Amis