Novel Quotes

• There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Writing, Real Talk, Story Writers

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• A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

  Jim Rohn

  Inspirational, Philosophy, Greatness

  FaceBook post by Jim Rohn from Feb 19, 2017

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• 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.

  Dick Francis

  Writing, Self, Tasks

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• For me, writing a novel is like having a dream. Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I'm still awake. I can continue yesterday's dream today, something you can't normally do in everyday life.

  Haruki Murakami

  Dream, Writing, Yesterday

  "Kafka on the Shore, readers at sea" by Sam Jordison, www.theguardian.com. August 20, 2015.

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• A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective.

  Edward Teller

  Believe, Science, Simple

  Edward Teller, Wendy Teller, Wilson Talley (2013). “Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics”, p.69, Basic Books

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• I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Trying, Novelists

  "William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12". Interview with Jean Stein, www.theparisreview.org. 1956.

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• A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life.

  Saul Bellow

  Impression, Multitudes, Balanced

  Speech on receiving the Nobel Prize, 1976

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• The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

  Jane Austen

  Inspirational, Funny, Stupid

  Jane Austen (2005). “Jane Austen: 8 Books in 1”, p.460, Shoes & Ships & Sealing Wax

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• A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Book, Reading, Hero

  1905 Heretics, ch.15.

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• 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.

  Edith Wharton

  Views, Political, Literature

  Edith Wharton, Richard Warrington Baldwin Lewis, Nancy Lewis (1988). “The letters of Edith Wharton”, Macmillan Reference USA

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• If I were a writer, how I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature. Lovely.

  Don DeLillo

  Love, Ghouls, Perception

  1982 Owen Brademas. The Names, ch.4.

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• When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a Novel.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Fashion, Writing, Romance

  1851 The House of the Seven Gables, preface.

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• Life is God's novel. Let him write it.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Life, Writing, Literature

  "Voices for Life" edited by Dom Moraes, 1975.

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• The writing of a novel is taking life as it already exists, not to report it but to make an object, toward the end that the finished work might contain this life inside it and offer it to the reader. The essence will not be, of course, the same thing as the raw material; it is not even of the same family of things. The novel is something that never was before and will not be again.

  Eudora Welty

  Writing, Essence, Raw Materials

  Eudora Welty (2011). “On Writing”, p.75, Modern Library

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• Novels written with film contracts in mind have a faint but unmistakable, and ruinous, odor.

  Annie Dillard

  Mind, Odor, Film

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• Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Inspirational, Sad, Regret

  Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Cat's Cradle: A Novel”, p.279, Dial Press

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• When a novel comes, it's a grace. Something in the cosmos has forgiven you long enough so that you can start.

  Norman Mailer

  Long, Grace, Cosmos

  1991 In The Guardian, 5 Oct.

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• The novel is a game or joke shared between author and reader.

  Annie Dillard

  Games, Reader, Jokes

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• An old novel has a history of its own.

  Alexander Smith

  Fiction

  Alexander Smith (1863). “Dreamthorp: A Book of Essays Written in the Country”, p.17

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• I've published several virtually invisible novels and several dozen even more invisible short stories over the years, all of which give me joy - unlike the cumulative experience of seeking publishers for them!

  Scott Bradfield

  Years, Giving, Joy

  "Go Forth (Vol. 15)". Interview with Brandon Hobson, logger.believermag.com. September 10, 2013.

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• I've heard Stephen King say that when you write a novel you end up revealing everything about yourself.

  Ernest Cline

  Kings, Writing, Ends

  "Author Ernie Cline Was Told Video Games Would Rot His Brain, But Who Holds the High Score Now?". Interview with Michael Mechanic, www.motherjones.com. July 10, 2015.

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• The novel wins by points, the short story by knockout.

  Julio Cortazar

  Winning, Stories, Knockouts

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• I don't talk about my books while I'm writing them: not even my husband knows what a novel's about until it's done.

  Sarah Dessen

  Husband, Book, Writing

  "Author Interview: Sarah Dessen on Just Listen". Interview with Cynthia Leitich Smith, cynthialeitichsmith.blogspot.com. December 12, 2006.

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• Usually, ordinary histories don't get the emotional feel of a period. That's what a novel can do.

  Alix Kates Shulman

  Emotional, Ordinary, Periods

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• Different influences at different times in my career, and some have stayed with me more, some less. Chester Himes. Ralph Dennis, who wrote a series called Hardman which is a big influence on the Hap and Leonard novels. Harlan Ellison, Philip Jose Farmer, Gerald Kersh, Fredrick Brown, Robert Bloch, and I'm just getting started. I read constantly. As for the epic Western, that's Paradise Sky.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Epic, Sky, Careers

  Source: thequietus.com

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