Books Quote by Truman Capote

Point-of-view is a matter that readers rarely pay attention to, yet it's one of the most important story decisions an author makes.

— Therese Fowler

As a writer I've learned certain lessons. One of them is to be careful about how you put a view, and to bear in…

— Alexander McCall Smith

Writing a novel is always complicated, it's not like you snap your fingers and go, 'Ah, I know what I'll write'. For me, a…

— Reif Larsen

To know what you want to say is not the best condition for writing a novel. Novels go happiest when you discover something you…

— Norman Mailer

The first thing you have to consider when writing a novel is your story, and then your story - and then your story!

— Ford Madox Ford

The only difficulty is to know what bits to choose and what to leave out. Novel-writing is not creation, it is selection.

— Winifred Holtby

I am a novelist. I traffic in subtleties, and my goal in writing a novel is to leave the reader not knowing what to…

— Teju Cole

I don't like to read novels where the novelist tells me what to think about the situation and the characters. I prefer to discover…

— Frederick Wiseman

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

— Peter Hedges

With a novel, you have to have a story. It's much more important to have it matter to the reader what happens to people,…

— Dave Barry

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

— Zadie Smith

I never plan my novels because if I know what is going to happen, it bores me rigid. I let the story tell itself.

— James Herbert