Popular quotes about Novels! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
In Pakistan, many of the young people read novels because in the novels, not just my novels but the novels of many other Pakistani writers, they encounter ideas, notions, ways of thinking about the world, thinking about their society that are different. And fiction functions in a countercultural way as it does in America and certainly as it did in the, you know, '60s.
Mohsin HamidI grew up on genre - on Westerns, spy thrillers, sci-fi, fantasy novels, horror novels. Especially horror novels.
Benjamin PercyThe difference does not lie in the things that news does that novels do not do, but in the things that novels do that news cannot do. In other words, this basic technique of news - just one among many - is something a novel can use, but a novel can deploy a multitude of other techniques also. Novels are not bound by the rules of reportage. Far from it. They're predicated on delivering experience.
Zia Haider RahmanI certainly think we're going to see more and more graphic novels and more illustrated novels.
Charlaine HarrisItโs the ability to bring events and characters to a resolution that draws me to writing, especially writing for children. I donโt want to ever be didactic, but if thereโs something I do want to say, itโs that you can bring things around. You can make a change. Adult novels are about letting go. Childrenโs novels are about getting a grip.
Tim Wynne-JonesNo one reads novels anymore. And I don't see the situation improving. People prefer video games, reality TV, and films. There are so many reasons now not to read novels.
Gore VidalI think overtly political novels - those that never transcend or contest their author's conscious intentions and prejudices - are problematic. This is not just true of the innumerable unread books in the socialist realist tradition, but also of novels that carry the burden of conservative ideologies, like Guerrillas, Naipaul's worst book, where the author's disgust for a certain kind of black activist and white liberal is overpowering.
Pankaj MishraI do not think novels are necessarily more worthwhile than games. A novel can be a trivial waste of time, and a game can teach. Whatever the genre, I think a successful narrative allows us to participate, to try on new roles and points of view. At their best, novels and games serve as vehicles for discovery.
Allegra GoodmanThere were a lot of adventure books for boys, historical novels by Kenneth Roberts, and whatever mystery novels the alarmed librarian imagined might not corrupt an eager but innocent youth.
Peter StraubIn all my novels, a sense of place - not just geographic but social - is a critical element. I have always been drawn to the novels of Edith Wharton, among others, where social dynamics are crucial. Wharton's class consciousness fascinates me, and some of the tension in my books stems from that.
Susan WiggsThe reason I did the name change is simple. I wrote a bunch of autobiographical material and I was really enjoying myself doing it, and in two of the songs I quote two different people (referring to me as Mr. Stace). And it just hit me at some point that it was ludicrous for me to think of myself as Wesley Stace, publish novels as Wesley Stace, be Wesley Stace and not have it released as Wesley Stace.
John Wesley HardingI do novels a bit backward. I look for a situation, a milieu first, and then I wait to see who walks into it.
Tom WolfeMy novels are about the European reality, not about chases. You want chases, get somebody else's books.
Alan FurstComics are stories; they're like novels or anything else. So the first thing you have to do is become a good storyteller.
Stan LeeWell, in Angel of Hope, Amber ends up going in her sister's stead. The focus of that book and the next one coming out, Angel of Love, is how she finds her way out of her sister's shadow and into herself. That's really what those two novels are based on.
Lurlene McDanielI'm not typing. I write only by longhand. I've always written first drafts by hand and then once I was into a second or third draft I wrote insert pages on a typewriter. But I got rid of all my typewriters about three or four novels ago and now I do everything by hand. I write by hand because it makes me go slow and going slow is what I like.
John IrvingA book is basically just symbols arranged to form this story, this world. But on the other hand, books, novels, literature in general, is what shows us at our most human.
Shane Warren JonesI work seven days a week, from 9 in the morning till 8 at night. I have the titles of the next eight novels I want to write. I feel myself pitiable, degraded on a day that I don't write.
Orhan PamukMy dad liked more macho adventure books like Shogun or spy novels. My mother reads murder mysteries. In fact, so does her mother, my grandma. That's where I trace the familial line of murder mystery obsession.
Christopher BollenWe read novels. We read hundreds of pages of words, when the story is good because we're willing to stay there. I hope the story is good. I'm going into this venture thinking that the audience is really smart and really wants to hear all the nuances of what we're saying.
Veena SudI've been told by people who write historical novels that you just sort of write the emotional truth first, the story at the core, and then you go back and research it at the end.
Jami AttenbergI would like to write a novel, or at least try to write one, although my motives are not entirely pure. For one thing, I get asked about writing novels so much that I feel guilty about never having written one. And although I have no strong desire to write a novel, I would hate not to try. That would just be silly. On the other hand, I hate the idea of slogging through something that turns out to be not good.
Kelly LinkWhether you look at Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism, wherever a distinction of sex is made, it is to the advantage of men. If you think of religions as if they were novels, the authors are men, and so are the major characters.
Katha PollittMaybe it goes without saying that if you want to become a famous writer before youโre dead, youโll have to write something. But the folks in my classes with the biggest ideas and the best publicity shots ready to grace the back covers of their best-selling novels are also usually the ones who arenโt holding any paper.
Ariel GoreIs it not superfluous to write more than one novel if the writer has not become, say, a new man? Obviously, all the novels of an author not infrequently belong together and are to a certain degree only one novel.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich SchlegelAtticus Lish is a true original and this is a tremendous book, relentless, moving, written in prose of marvelous integrity. Now that America and the novel are dead, I hope we can have more great American novels as alive as this one.
Sam LipsyteWe are all inspired by the incredible stories of handicapped people who write novels with their toes, cancer victims who run marathons for cancer research, bereaved parents who set up memorial funds for their lost children. How much easier is it for most of us to be small heroes simply by taking responsibility for our daily lives and transcending our ordinary obstacles?
Danah ZoharThere are often references to childhood, but they're rarely the focus of the [my] novels.
Paul AusterAs a kid I wanted to write science fiction, and I was never without a book. Later I really got into being a scientist and never thought I'd be writing novels.
Daniel H. WilsonAuthors, she soon decided, were probably best met within the pages of their novels, and were as much creatures of the reader's imagination as the characters in their books. Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them.
Alan BennettWhenever summer rolls around I begin to realize that I'm a complete and utter book snob. In relation to reading, I have absolutely no guilty pleasures at all. No graphic novels. No murder mysteries. My summer read is really no different from my winter read. I know many bookshops and magazines would have me believe that our summer forays are different, but literature is literature, and unfortunately snobbery is snobbery.
Colum McCannI can remember as a college student writing stories and novels, some of which ended up getting published and some that didn't. It was like my head was going to burst - there were so many things I wanted to write all at once. I had so many ideas, jammed up. It was like they just needed permission to come out.
Stephen KingTo grasp organizational life as it is, read novels (!) .... It is my fervent belief that we will never design rational processes that "overcome" such irregularities-don't bother telling that to a consultant. Hence, we should embrace the real, nonrational, nonlinear world with vigor and glee-and develop enterprise and career strategies accordingly.
Tom PetersI don't read books. I like to read newspapers and magazines, but I've never learnt to enjoy books or novels.
Kid RockMy first published novel, American Rust, took three and a half years of full-time work to write. But I wrote two apprentice novels before that.
Philipp MeyerAnd I know I'm supposed to feel guilty for wanting people to buy my books... and books in general? Novels and poetry, they belong to the realm of art. How dirty of us to try to hawk art! But, after a decade of hand-wringing and apologies, I can't quite muster the guilt anymore.
Julianna BaggottRomance novels are my favorite books to read. I write young adult romances, and am so happy to be promoting this wonderful genre.
Simone ElkelesIn order to capture Mid-World for new readers, I had to streamline the original tale [ The Gunslinger Born], but I also had to incorporate scenes from earlier Dark Tower novels.
Robin FurthI've written a lot of novels for teens and tweens ... but I'd never really tackled the North Carolina side of me. And it's so strong and so important, and yet I hadn't acknowledged it. And so one of the things I wanted to do in "Shine" is take that on.
Lauren MyracleThere is interest in a crime-based reality show. With my novels, we are now editing the second book in a series about a defense lawyer whose name is Samantha Brinkman. And I am reviewing speaking engagement opportunities.
Marcia ClarkIt seems to me that the novel is very much alive as a form. Without any question, every epoch has its own forms, and the novel nowadays cannot resemble that of the nineteenth century. In this domain all experiments are justified, and it is better to write something new clumsily than to repeat the old brilliantly. In the nineteenth century, novels dealt with the fate of a person or of a family; this was linked to life in that period. In our time the destinies of people are interwoven. Whether man recognizes it or not, his fate is much more linked to that of many other people than it used to be.
Ilya EhrenburgWhen I began to write novels, I wanted to keep that element of interaction with the reader that exists in poetry, not just for the reader to be shepherded from A to B to C to D but to participate, and the less you say sometimes, the better it is. You know, it's the way when someone speaks very quietly, you move forward so you can listen more carefully.
Michael Ondaatje