Novel Quotes

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. (G. K. Chesterton)
You can have a men's novel with no women in it except possibly the landlady or the horse, but you can't have a women's novel with no men in it. View quote
Margaret Atwood
I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author's political views. View quote
Edith Wharton
The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting. View quote
Henry James
One man writes a novel. One man writes a symphony. It is essential that one man make a film. View quote
Stanley Kubrick
If I were a writer, how I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature. Lovely. View quote
Don DeLillo
I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel. What's an unpopular novel? View quote
Irwin Shaw
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. View quote
Jane Austen
A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective. View quote
Edward Teller
When I want to read a novel, I write one. View quote
Benjamin Disraeli
The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human. Meander if you want to get to town. (Michael Ondaatje)
In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end. View quote
Alexis de Tocqueville
The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life. View quote
Henry James
When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature. View quote
Ernest Hemingway
I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies. View quote
Thomas Babington Macaulay
There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel. View quote
Anthony Trollope
Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life. View quote
George Sand
Life is God's novel. Let him write it. View quote
Isaac Bashevis Singer
A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality. View quote
Milan Kundera
I like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any. View quote
Jean Rhys
Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories, the streets, the cathedrals of the imagination. (Janet Frame)
Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. View quote
Flannery O’Connor
Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
I want to write a novel so profound that it would suffocate a fly. View quote
Gao Xingjian