The Novel Quotes

My idea of a good novel was one you made enough money out of to buy a greenhouse.

In a novel, the biggest symbiosis exists between plot and character. In a song, it would be the lyrics and the melody.

There follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born.

He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.

Our past is a novel that we are constantly revising.

Writing a novel proved to be the hardest, most self-analyzing task I had ever attempted, far worse than an autobiography: and its rewards were greater than I expected.

A great novel is worth one thousand films.

A couple of times he called the second he'd finished reading a novel and just had to tell me about it, and I know it sounds hokey and librarianish to say so, but I just swooned when he did that.

I am writing about people who are alive in the city of New York during mid-20th-century America. And these people are like a character in a play or they are figures in a short story or a novel.

Novels seem to me to be richer, broader, deeper, more enjoyable than poems.

I wonder what the retirement age is in the novel business. The day you die.

The 'silly question' is the first intimation of some totally novel development.

A novel is not a summary of its plot but a collection of instances, of luminous specific details that take us in the direction of the unsaid and unseen.

When you hold a graphic novel in your hands, you're holding artist blood made ink.

We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we?

For me, a good YA novel is the best kind of comfort food.

People are so afraid to say the word "comic". It makes you think of a grown man with pimples, a ponytail and a big belly. Change it to "graphic novel" and that disappears.

I don't read that many novels, I'm more of a nonfiction fan.

Travelling is like a novel: it's what happens that counts.

The way I figure it, everyone gets a miracle.

I can't bring myself to trust you. But even if you were to betray me, and even if you were to become my enemy... would it be okay for me to love? Could you... let me love you?

A Time Comes When Silence is Betrayal.

Watergate is an immensely complicated scandal with a cast of characters as varied as a Tolstoy novel.

I've never read a young adult novel, though. I'm sure I would love it, but I've never read one.

I'll write to you. A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel

Great, big, serious novels always get awards. If it's a battle between a great, big, serious novel and a funny novel, the funny novel is doomed.

There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.

I enjoy research; in fact research is so engaging that it would be easy to go on for years, and never write the novel at all.

The way this whole novel thing came together was, I sold them one bill of goods and then didn't communicate very well. I am like Captain Run-on Sentence.

I think that setting a novel in a small town taps into a sense of nostalgia among readers. People tend to believe life is different in small towns, and frankly, it is different.

All novels are experimental.

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.

If I had a plot that was all set in advance, why would I want go through the agony of writing the novel? A novel is a kind of exploration and discovery, for me at any rate.

You would go mad if you began to speculate about the impact your novel might have while you were still writing it.

Like any good spy novel, the Cox Report alleges that Chinese spies penetrated four U.S. weapons research labs and stole important information on seven nuclear warhead designs.

Let me tell you one thing about why writers write: had I known the answer to any of these questions I would never have needed to write a novel.

My favourite novel is Frederick Forsythe's Day Of The Jackal, the story about the unproven case of this apparent Englishman who was hired to assassinate De Gaulle….

Movies have to handle time very efficiently. They're about stringing scenes together in the present. Novels aren't necessarily about that.

You can be interested in a Jane Smiley novel whether or not anyone says a word. She enters into her characters thoughts with great understanding and depth.

Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing.

However, the difficulties and pleasures of the writing itself are similar for a novel with a historical setting and a novel with a contemporary setting, as far as I'm concerned.

I have assiduously avoided calling my books novels

I'm inspired by watching and listening to people. For example, my first novel, The Scale, came to life after I overheard two women discussing their struggle with their weight at the gym.

The novel, in its best form, I regard as one of the most powerful engines of civilization ever invented.

There is no better way of elevating the novel than by making it into a construct which contains ideas.

If you can read and have more imagination than a doorknob, what need do you have for a 'movie version' of a novel?

Today I began the novel that I determined to be great.

If I'd had more time or been a better writer, I would have tried to put the same ideas and experiences into a novel. But I didn't so I slapped it up on the Web.

Building a dollhouse is a lot like writing a novel because you are God of the Universe.

It means that no matter what you write, be it a biography, an autobiography, a detective novel, or a conversation on the street, it all becomes fiction as soon as you write it down.