Novel Quotes

The novel is always pop art, and the novel is always dying. That's the only way it stays alive. It does really die. I've been thinking about that a lot.

And that which yesterday was the novel opinion of one man, to-day becomes the general opinion of the majority.

I've realized that with each novel I seem to set out a kind of puzzle for myself. And I am never sure in the process of writing a first draft how it's all going to turn out.

I don't see the direct correlation between my personal life and the novel I'm writing until I'm at the end of the novel or very close to it.

Make your novel readable. Make it easy to read, pleasant to read. This doesn't mean flowery passages, ambitious flights of pyrotechnic verbiage; it means strong, simple, natural sentences.

I've always relied on producing more material than I need. With each of my published novels I've written around four times the amount of material that's ended up in the book.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (whose mother died ten days after she was born) wrote a novel that anticipates Semmelweis's discovery and serves as a parable for the destructive power of decaying matter.

When you are young, hone your craft and write shorter pieces instead of novels, because it's really hard to finish a novel.

I started blogging in 2006 when I had sold my first novel but it had not yet been published, in those anxious months in between while I learned the whole process.

I love James Baldwin essays, but also his novels. I recently read "Another Country." I couldn't believe how ahead of his time he was.

When you have a novel set in a fictional history, you still should get your history right.

The Lake of Dreams grew gradually, over many years, elements and ideas accruing until they gained enough critical mass to become a novel.

I turned to the Partition experiences, which were churning in my mind. Then came my first novel Train to Pakistan.

I give novels as gifts, and there is nothing I like to receive more as a gift.

The story line of my novel [The Kite Runner] is largely fictional. The characters were invented and the plot imagined.

The novel [The Kite Runner] came about as an expansion of that original, unpublished short story.

A novel is too much of a commitment. I tend to peruse Twitter - I check to see if I had any mentions and read the latest messages.

I sold my very first novel when I was 24 or 25 years old.

I read mostly fiction, a lot of 19th-century novels.

If life were a novel, then dead would mark the end of the first chapter.

I really have to think of the things fiction can do that film can't and play to the strengths of the novel. With a novel you can get right inside somebody's head.

There's a perception that good writing is writing which runs smoothly. But smooth-running prose can work against what you're trying to express in a novel.

Gritty and witty, The Chicago Way is done the classic Raymond Chandler Way. Harvey's taut plot, snappy prose, and memorable characters make this debut novel a real winner.

My first book was the most successful debut novel in the UK ever and every one of my books has reached number one in the UK. Clearly the British know brilliance when they see it.

The ingredients that make a good poem often differ from those that make a good essay and from those that make a good novel.

Writing a novel is a lot like reading one.

The nonfiction novel or literary memoir as authored by women is usually given a much harder time in mainstream criticism.

For children: I'm writing a picture book about the Big Dipper and a novel about a cricket, a firefly and a vole. For grownups: I'm writing poems.

All good writing is built one good line at a time. You build a novel the same way you do a pyramid. One word, one stone at a time, underneath a full moon while the fingers bleed.

I feel like my brain is more geared towards a novel than it is to a movie.

Sylvie's knowledge, like Izzie's, was random yet far-ranging, 'The sign that one has acquired one's learning from reading novels rather than an education.

People are rushed and inspired by the success of Indian writers, and are falling over themselves to write novels. Every Indian is writing a novel right now. No one wants to revise.

The first novel that I wrote was because I was having very interesting sorts of experiences, for Indians of my generation.

Of course we all know that's not how life works. The novel that is our life can end at any time. Sometimes even on page one.

A scrupulous man will never produce a great novel.

In fact, with each of my novels I have been surprised by something that happens that I had not thought of beforehand.

I received so many positive comments about the quotes that I decided to continue to use them in my novels.

Having been an editor for more than a decade, I thought I had a good idea of how much work was involved in writing a novel. I was wrong! Writing is a lot harder than I ever imagined - but worth it.

When a colleague of mine had a notable New York Times book, I said, turn one of the chapters in the collection into a pitch for a novel and sell it to your publisher.

I think it's always a challenge to adapt something from one medium to another - a novel into a film or a play into a movie or whatever.

Do we tend to recall the most important parts of a novel or those that speak most directly to us, the truest lines or the flashiest ones?

In 1980, I published my first novel, in the usual swirl of unjustified hope and justified anxiety.

To this day, The Duke and I remains particularly close to my heart; I felt it was the novel in which my writing took a huge leap forward.

I keep waiting for the day in which everyone who loves Downton Abbey will realize they were actually watching a historical romance novel.

Design is about crafting an experience that is unfamiliar enough to feel novel, yet familiar enough to instill confidence.

Most publishers seem very reluctant to publish short story collections at all; they bring them out in paperback, often disguised as novels.

If you want to write the next great novel, but you think, No, this won't work because no one will buy it or it won't be any good, then you talk yourself out of taking a risk.

I have a backlog of novels which I would love to be working on and would be working on if I were not obliged to hold down a full time job.

Coca-Cola can get really fresh output because it is getting people who are outside the traditional model and they are combining ideas in very novel ways.

When writing a novel, I'm not smart enough to know how to foreshadow something if I don't know what it is.