Novel Quotes - page 47

ROMANCE, n. Fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of Things as They Are. In the novel the writer's thought is tethered to probability, but in romance it ranges at will over the entire region of the imagination ... (Ambrose Bierce)
It is clear that a novel cannot be too bad to be worth publishing.... It certainly is possible for a novel to be too good to be worth publishing. View quote
George Bernard Shaw
If I'm hanging around too much, my wife and kids say, 'Hey, why don't you go downstairs and start a new novel?' View quote
Nick Cave
The experience of writing 'The Kite Runner' is one I will always think back on with fondness. There is an energy, a romance in writing the first novel that can never be duplicated again. View quote
Khaled Hosseini
All my life I have been trying to learn, to read, to see and hear, and to write. At sixty-five I began my first novel and after the five years, lacking a month, I took to finish it, I was still traveling, still a seeker. View quote
Carl Sandburg
The manual for WordStar, the most popular word-processing program, is 400 pages thick. To write a novel, you have to read a novel - one that reads like a mystery to most people. They're not going to learn slash q-z any more than they're going to learn Morse code. That is what Macintosh is all about. View quote
Steve Jobs
Some novel lovers have no interest in comics, and some comics fans would never take the time to read a novel. View quote
Christopher Golden
I wanted to write a novel about the sandwich generation: parents falling to pieces at one end of your life and children being quite demanding at the other. You, the woman, are probably working full-time, but society, which is really very old-fashioned, still expects women to do all the caring. View quote
Joanna Trollope
Captain Ahab was a man possessed with an obsessional drive to pursue the white whale which had harmed him - which had torn his leg out - to the ends of the Earth, no matter what happened. In the final scene of the novel, Captain Ahab is being borne out to sea, wrapped around the white whale with the rope of his own harpoon and going obviously to his death. It was a scene of almost suicidal finality. View quote
Edward Said
When I first got back from the war, I said, 'I'm gonna write the Great American Novel about the Vietnam War.' So I sat down and wrote 1,700 pages of sheer psychotherapy drivel. It was first person, and there would be pages about wet socks and cold feet. View quote
Karl Marlantes
In many ways, my entire graphic novel career was a long diversion. Originally, all I wanted to do was to be an underground cartoonist and maybe bring out a groovy underground mag. (Alan Moore)
Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. View quote
Alan Moore
People have asked me why I made the first chapter of my first novel so long, and in an invented English. The only answer I can come up with that satisfies me is, 'To keep out the scum.' View quote
Alan Moore
Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky. View quote
Alan Moore
I suspect there are two kinds of novelists. Those who have a point of view and have something to say and then write a novel in order to say that thing, and those of us who write the book in order to find out what we think about that thing. View quote
Neil Gaiman
I kept starting 'Anansi Boys' as a movie and stopping, and eventually wrote the novel and was happy. View quote
Neil Gaiman
Nobody ever wrote so well so fast as Jim. One year he wrote, and we published, nine novels. It was an obsession. Back in 1941, his father had been in an asylum in Oklahoma City, begging Jim to get him out. Jim needed money to get him out, so he said to his father, "Give me a month, and I'll raise the money." His father brightened, because Jim never went back on his word. Jim took a bus to New York City and went door to door to the publishing houses, asking for money for a hotel room, a rented typewriter and meals so he could write a novel. Finally, at Modern Age, they took a chance, and in 10 days he wrote a novel. But things being what they are in publishing, it was a month plus one day before Jim got his advance. The same day, a telegram arrived. His father had committed suicide, ripping the excelsior out of his mattress and stuffing it down his throat. When Jim would drink he would sometimes cry and say, "Why couldn't he have waited another day? Didn't he trust me?" View quote
Arnold Hano
It's the technique, I think, of writing a novel that is difficult for a nonfiction writer. View quote
E. O. Wilson
I had reached a point in my career in which I was ready to try something new in my writing, and the idea of a novel has always been in the back of my mind. View quote
E. O. Wilson
In addition I wanted to write a Southern novel, because I'm a Southerner. View quote
E. O. Wilson
The idea that a book can advise a woman how to capture a man is touchingly naive. Books advising men how to capture a woman are far less common, perhaps because few men are willing to admit to such a difficulty. For both sexes, I recommend a good novel, offering scenarios you might learn from, if only because they reflect a lot of doubt. (Roger Ebert)
For me, a paragraph in a novel is a bit like a line in a poem. It has its own shape, its own music, its own integrity. View quote
Paul Auster
As a teacher at Princeton, I'm surrounded by people who work hard so I just make good use of my time. And I don't really think of it as work - writing a novel, in one sense, is a problem-solving exercise. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
Before you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
To be true to life, a novel must have an ending that is inevitable given the specific personalities of the characters involved. The novelist must not impose an ending upon them. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates