Novel famous quotes

Iris Murdoch did influence my early novels very much, and influence is never entirely good.
-- A. N. Wilson

#Irises #Influence #Novel

Life is not like a novel, but a novel can be like life. The best ones always are.
-- Aidan Chambers

#Life Is #Novel

I invented the historical spy novel.
-- Alan Furst

#Historical #Spy #Novel

If you wrote a novel in South Africa which didn't concern the central issues, it wouldn't be worth publishing.
-- Alan Paton

#Issues #Novel #Concern

Imaginatively Glasgow exists as a music hall song and a few bad novels.
-- Alasdair Gray

#Song #Novel #Glasgow

The novel as we knew it in the nineteenth century was killed off by Proust and Joyce.
-- Alberto Moravia

#Proust #Nineteenth Century #Novel

I take a lot from everywhere. I take from music, architecture, novels, and plays. Anywhere that hits you.
-- Alex Winter

#Play #Architecture #Novel

An old novel has a history of its own.
-- Alexander Smith

#Fiction #Novel

History is a novel for which the people is the author.
-- Alfred de Vigny

#People #Novel

No one knows how to write a novel until it's been written
-- Alice Hoffman

#Writing #Novel

NOVEL, n. A short story padded...
-- Ambrose Bierce

#Stories #Literature #Novel

All of my novels are democracies.
-- Amos Oz

#Democracy #Novel

It took me six novels before I felt confident of my voice as a writer,
-- Andrea Hirata

#Voice #Six #Novel

Diana felt she was beginning to understand why, in all those novels she read, the headiest loves were the loves that couldn't be.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Diana #Novel

A novel is written not to be judged, but experienced.
-- Anne Enright

#Novel #Judged

Mostly what happens in the novels never happened in real life.
-- Anne Lamott

#Real #Real Life #Novel

I save the best of myself for novels, and I believe it shows
-- Anne Tyler

#Believe #I Believe #Novel

All novels are experimental.
-- Anthony Burgess

#Fiction #Novel

There's never a false note in a Berg novel.
-- Augusten Burroughs

#Notes #Novel

She had always been an unashamed reader of novels ...
-- Barbara Pym

#Novel #Reader

My advice to anyone adapting a novel is that once they've read it and learnt to understand it, then they must throw it away and never look at it again!
-- Ben Elton

#Advice #Looks #Novel

People used to expect literary novels to deepen the experience of living; now they are happy with any sustained display of writerly cleverness.
-- Brian Reynolds

#People #Used #Novel

Will Shatner, Jonathan Frakes of Star Trek have already put novels out.
-- Bruce Boxleitner

#Stars #Novel

Novel writing is far and away the most exhausting work I know.
-- C. S. Forester

#Writing #Novel #Novel Writing

For me, having it all is being paid to write novels.
-- Candace Bushnell

#Writing #Novel

Wherever I am, I take books, not novels.
-- Caprice Bourret

#Book #Novel

This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue.
-- Carol Shields

#Novel #Monologues

Someone ought to write a novel about me,
-- Catherynne M. Valente

#Writing #Novel

The novel has always been the form that incorporates other forms. For me, it has always been the ultimate medium.
-- Chad Harbach

#Form #Novel #Mediums

Somehow, you can achieve a directness in the novel that you can't get anywhere else.
-- Chad Harbach

#Achieve #Novel

I certainly think we're going to see more and more graphic novels and more illustrated novels.
-- Charlaine Harris

#Thinking #Graphic Novels #Novel

I do have some theatrical background. I've written plays and seen plays and read plays. But I also read novels. One thing I don't read is screenplays.
-- Charlie Kaufman

#Play #Novel #Backgrounds

Why did people ask "What is it about?" as if a novel had to be about only one thing.
-- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#People #Novel

The best way to write a novel is to do it behind your own back.
-- China Mieville

#Writing #Way #Novel

Novels for me are how I find out what's going on in my own head. And so that's a really useful and indeed critical thing to do when you do as many of these other things as I do.
-- Cory Doctorow

#Novel #Critical

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

#Fans #Nonfiction #Novel

You know, the point of a novel - or to me, the point of a novel, the gift of a novel is to go really deeply inside people's lives and inside their personal experiences.
-- Curtis Sittenfeld

#People #Really Deep #Novel

Only in a novel are all things given full play.
-- D. H. Lawrence

#Play #Given #Novel

The novel is the highest form of human expression so far attained. Why? Because it is so incapable of the absolute.
-- D. H. Lawrence

#Expression #Form #Novel

It takes a long time to write a novel when you have to keep interrupting your work to earn money.
-- Dana Spiotta

#Writing #Long #Novel

I've never had time to read. But no one ever kept me from finishing a novel I loved.
-- Daniel Pennac

#Finishing #Novel

Life's like a novel with the end ripped out.
-- Danny Orton

#Life #Ends #Novel

It's hard being a hostage in somebody else's mouth - or a character in somebody else's novel.
-- David Antin

#Character #Mouths #Novel

Fiction novels, that's my game.
-- David Benioff

#Games #Fiction #Novel

Although every novel is derived directly from another novel, there is really only one novel, the Quixote.
-- David Berlinski

#Novel

It's true, reading too many novels makes you go blind.
-- David Mitchell

#Reading #Blind #Novel

My medium is prose, not the novel.
-- David Shields

#Novel #Mediums #Prose

I love to run and I have some tips to keep it fresh and novel. I rarely use the same route twice. That keeps things new.
-- Dean Karnazes

#Running #Use #Novel

I have learned a great deal from novels. Some of it is even true.
-- Dean Koontz

#I Have Learned #Novel #Deals

But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be aware of this till she is pretty far along with it.
-- Diane Johnson

#May #Novel #Significance

Glenda Adams has written a wicked and witty novel.
-- Diane Johnson

#Witty #Wicked #Novel

I read *old* novels. The reason is simple. I prefer proper endings.
-- Diane Setterfield

#Simple #Reason #Novel

I've read every one of Donald Goines' books. So as soon as I heard there was an opportunity for one of his novels to be turned into a movie, I jumped at the opportunity.
-- DMX

#Book #Opportunity #Novel

How I wish I lived in a Jane Austen novel!
-- Dodie Smith

#Wish #Novel #Austen

Michael Koryta is an amazingly talented writer, and I rank The Prophet as one of the sharpest and superbly plotted crime novels I've read in my life.
-- Donald Ray Pollock

#Crime #Prophet #Novel

I never know what's going to happen in a novel. I don't have a plan or an outline.
-- Donna Leon

#Novel #Plans

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

#Writing #Law #Novel

Human beings have their great chance in the novel.
-- E. M. Forster

#Chance #Novel #Humans

A novel must give a sense of permanence as well as a sense of life.
-- E. M. Forster

#Writing #Giving #Novel

I try to keep all my novels in print. Sometimes publishers don't agree with me as to their worth.
-- Ed McBain

#Trying #Sometimes #Novel

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

#Life #People #Novel

History is a novel that has been lived, a novel is history that could have been.
-- Edmond de Goncourt

#Novel

The thing about the 'Melrose' novels is that I have to feel they're impossible when I set out.
-- Edward St Aubyn

#Impossible #Novel #Feels

For a bookworm like Mother, a Brontë novel sister was better than a biological one.
-- Eileen Favorite

#Mother #Novel #Bookworms

the slight sense of degeneracy induced by reading novels before luncheon
-- Elizabeth Bowen

#Reading #Novel

Now, my novel begins. No, now I begin my novel—and yet I cannot decide whether to call myself I or she.
-- Elizabeth Hardwick

#Novel

For me, the novel is experience illumined by imagination ...
-- Ellen Glasgow

#Imagination #Novel

the great novels have marched with the years. They are the contemporaries of time.
-- Ellen Glasgow

#Years #Novel

A good novel cannot be too long nor a bad novel too short.
-- Ellen Glasgow

#Long #Too Short #Novel

A memoir is always the most authentic telling of a situation, but a novel gets to different places.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Different #Situation #Novel

Our past is a novel that we are constantly revising.
-- Eric G. Wilson

#Past #Novel #Our Past

Any man's life, told truly, is a novel...
-- Ernest Hemingway

#Men #Novel

The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.
-- Ernest Hemingway

#Writing #Finishing #Novel

There are some short essays that are very grave, and most contemporary novels are lighter than air.
-- Fran Lebowitz

#Air #Graves #Novel

I wrote about four novels before I wrote a word of journalism.
-- Francine Prose

#Four #Journalism #Novel

Every novel worthy of the name is like another planet, whether large or small, which has its own laws just as it has its own flora and fauna.
-- Francois Mauriac

#Worthy #Novel

I write whenever it suits me. During a creative period I write every day; a novel should not be interrupted. When I cease to be carried along, when I no longer feel as though I were taking down dictation, I stop.
-- Francois Mauriac

#Writing #Creative #Novel

I've tried very hard and I've never found any resemblance between the people I know and the people in my novels.
-- Francoise Sagan

#People #Found #Novel

I can't think of any one film that improved on a good novel, but I can think of many good films that came from very bad novels.
-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez

#Thinking #Film #Novel

We are not quite novels. We are not quite short stories. In the end, we are collected works
-- Gabrielle Zevin

#Stories #Ends #Novel

You never learn how to write a novel. You just learn how to write the novel that you're writing.
-- Gene Wolfe

#Writing #Novel

All novels are fantasies. Some are more honest about it.
-- Gene Wolfe

#Honest #Fantasy #Novel

I never even had the time to read novels.
-- George McGovern

#Novel

almost all novels are love stories.
-- George Sand

#Stories #Love Story #Novel

We are all potentially characters in a novel--with the difference that characters in a novel really get to live their lives to the full.
-- Georges Simenon

#Character #Differences #Novel

I've started many novels, and they all ended on page seven.
-- Grace Paley

#Pages #Seven #Novel

I set out to write a screenplay but, since my early 20s, had dreamed of writing a novel.
-- Graeme Simsion

#Writing #Novel #Screenplays

Novels, in my experience, are slow in coming, and once I've begun them I know I have years rather than months of work ahead of me.
-- Graham Swift

#Years #Months #Novel

I have assiduously avoided calling my books novels
-- Guillermo Cabrera Infante

#Book #Calling #Novel

I have always argued, in a good novel, interesting things happen to interesting people.
-- Guy Gavriel Kay

#People #Interesting #Novel

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

#Comfort #Kind #Novel

In real life, coincidences happen all the time. In novels, they are leapt upon with fury.
-- Harlan Coben

#Real #Coincidence #Novel

Southern lawyers don't read novels much.
-- Harper Lee

#Southern #Lawyer #Novel

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

#Ideas #Way #Novel

People compose poetry, novels, sitcoms - for love.
-- Helen Fisher

#People #Novel #Sitcom

When someone asks me to list the 10 best novels ever written, I always refuse to answer.
-- Henning Mankell

#Answers #Lists #Novel

What is either a picture or a novel that is not character?
-- Henry James

#Writing #Character #Novel

We trust to novels to train us in the practice of great indignations and great generosity.
-- Henry James

#Practice #Generosity #Novel

I'm a very organised and rational and linear thinker, and you have to stop all that to write a novel.
-- Hilary Mantel

#Writing #Linear #Novel

The novel is rescued life.
-- Hortense Calisher

#Novel