The Novel Quotes

HBO and I have a deal to at least try to make a television series from the Leonid McGill stories. We're going to start with the first novel, 'The Long Fall'.

[ Lady Susan novel by Jane Austen is] extremely difficult to adapt. I worked on it for years, for, like, ten years, before I started showing it to people. This was my back-burner project.

My first novel was rejected by some of the most eminent publishers in the world. Starting again was a real wrench.

Screenwriter Flacco nicely evokes the aftermath of San Francisco's 1906 earthquake in his fiction debut, a novel of suspense.

There's a sense in all my novels that nothing is certain.

I know many older writers who were very successful and whose books are now out of print, so you have to go to antiquarian booksellers to buy their fifth or eighth novel or whatever it is.

My novels are often about people who are in love or attracted to each other.

I don't begin a novel with a shopping list - the novel becomes my shopping list as I write it.

I don't much live my life as if I was living in a Raymond Chandler novel, which is probably a good thing.

Novels set in imaginary futures are necessarily about the moment in which they are written.

Every novel is a biography. Well, then, this is a novel [The Paper Men] which is a biography that is pretending to be an autobiography. That's what you could say about it.

I really feel the novel has certain conveniences about it and has something so fundamental about it you could almost say that as long as there is paper, there is going to be the novel.

As far as the novel is concerned in my own country, I think it's in a pretty healthy state.

When I began to write seriously, 40 years ago now, my chosen form was the novel.

I could get a better education interviewing John Steinbeck than talking to an English professor about novels.

Repeated reflection and inquiry have led me to the somewhat novel opinion, that value depends entirely upon utility.

I would much rather not be the center of attention, and I'd much rather travel and be writing my novel, rather than standing on a stage and trying to get people to understand something.

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

I've read the Bible. I think the Bible's a great book, but it's a novel. It's beautifully written and la-di-da, but people really took it the wrong way.

To reflect the entire spectrum, the dynamics of the adventure novel must be invested with a philosophic synthesis of one kind or another.

Novel-writing is a settling, lovely space. I call it self-indulgent - I feel mildly guilty about it.

The novel leads you places that you never could have gotten to otherwise.

All novels attempt to cut neural routes through the brain, to convince us that down this road the true future of the novel lies.

For me, George Saunders novel [Lincoln in the Bardo] is about a problem of pain.

I never bought the idea of individual genius from which the novel spews forth. It's always an act of curation.

It's not in good taste to have talking ghosts in a grown-up novel.

One thing you learn about the novel as a form is that it's always smarter than you are.

Every once in a while I feel the tremendous force of the novel. But it does not stay with me.

There are hours when I must force the novel out of my mind and be interested in the children.

'Pastoralia' by George Saunders is one of my favorite novels.

It’s getting a little chilly in here! Why don’t we sit by the fireplace and I’ll tell you the story of how I single handedly killed the Medina boys!

Sometimes things are just what they seem to be and that's all there is to it.

Monsters are real and ghosts are real too they live inside us and sometimes they win.

Whenever you are transplanted, like me, you will understand how very delightful it is to meet with anything at all like what one has left behind.

Paths cross all the time in this world of ours, sometimes in the strangest places- Charles Jacobs

And he always checks that he carries three things with him: faith, hope, and love.

His mind is like that. On the inside, where he never smiles.

True love is loving yourself thoroughly so that you can love another unconditionally.

It feels like someone is gripping my heart and twisting it. It feels like I can't breathe. I shut my eyes tightly against the memory that is threatening to surface. I can't br

Do you plan on marrying Charles?”She shook her head.“Good. I wouldn’t want to shoot him, but I would."... Finding Promise

A nation that is hungry for God will not go hungry." Duffy French, book character

LOVE is the most incendiary element ever known, once it sparks the heart, the flame is inextinguishable.

The old law of an eye for an eye didn’t make them blind to the fact that another man’s terrorist wasn’t their freedom fighter.

I am not an atheist preacher. I am not an absolutist or chauvinist whose ways are immune to evolution. My core philosophy is that I might be wrong.

Sometimes a night of over-eating leaves you hungry for something you can't name. An emptiness haunted me. An emptiness I didn't have a name for until I met Jeb. Now, I' m starving.

We all have a book in us. The first step is recognising this. Writing it is a whole new journey.

It was William who would climb out of his carriage unafraid and help a farmer drive a herd of cattle or sheep across a road when necessary.

Talk to me. Say something, anything, " he pleaded quietly as if he was trying to tame a wild animal."There's nothing to say."He looked up and lowered his eyebrows on his eyes. "Why did you kiss me?

Those who perpetrate stories must act cruelly.

With the right tools, you can write anything ...