Novel Quotes - Page 27

• Daisy had known the novel was silly even as she had read it, but that had not detracted one bit from her enjoyment.

  Lisa Kleypas

  Silly, Daisies, Enjoyment

  Lisa Kleypas (2009). “Scandal in Spring”, p.29, Harper Collins

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• [Kafka] transformed the profoundly antipoetic material of a highly bureaucratized society into the great poetry of the novel; he transformed a very ordinary story of a man who cannot obtain a promised job . . . into myth, into epic, into a kind of beauty never before seen.

  Milan Kundera

  Jobs, Epic, Men

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• Inside the envelope with the letter was a little Princess Leia action figure USB flash drive. For me to store my novel on, since he was right - I never back up my computer's hard drive. The sight of it - it's Princess Leia in her Hoth outfit, my favorite of her costumes (how had he remembered?) brought tears to my eyes.

  Meg Cabot

  Princess, Eye, Sight

  "Crowning Glory". Book by Meg Cabot, 2009.

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• I am a man and alive. For this reason I am a novelist. And, being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, te scientist, the philosopher, and the poet, who are all great masters of different bits of man alive, but never get the whole hog....Only in the novel are all things given full play.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Men, Play, Novelists

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• Unless a writer lives with a periodic delusion of his greatness, he will not continue writing. He must believe, against all reason and evidence, that the public will experience a catastrophic loss if he does not complete his novel. The public is just clamoring to give him his fame. From the book Dare to be a Great Writer: 329 Keys to Powerful Fiction by

  Leonard Bishop

  Powerful, Believe, Book

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• The novels that attract me most are those that create an illusion of transparency around a knot of human relationships as obscure, cruel, and perverse as possible.

  Italo Calvino

  Illusion, Obscure, Knots

  "If On A Winter's Night A Traveller".

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• Compared to a novel, a film is like an economy pizza where there are no olives, no ham, no anchovies, no mushrooms, and all you’ve got is the dough.

  Louis de Bernieres

  Mushrooms, Ham, Olives

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• The door of the novel, like the door of the poem, also shuts. But not so fast, nor with such manic, unanswerable finality.

  Sylvia Plath

  Doors, Manic, Finality

  Sylvia Plath (1994). “Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams”

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• The mighty steam-engine has its germ in the simple boiler in which the peasant prepares his food. The huge ship is but the expansion of the floating leaf freighted with its cargo of atmospheric dust; and the flying balloon is but the infant's soap-bubble lightly laden and overgrown. But the Telescope, even in its most elementary form, embodies a novel and gigantic idea, without an analogue in nature, and without a prototype in experience

  John Timbs

  Nature, Science, Simple

  John Timbs (2012). “Stories of Inventors and Discoverers in Science and the Useful Arts”, p.212, BoD – Books on Demand

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• Writing's funny, it's like walking down a hall in the dark looking for the light switch, and suddenly you find it, flip it on, and then you discover the hallway you passed through is papered with the novel you've written.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Writing, Dark, Light

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• It was like being in a Jane Austen novel, but one with far less clothing.

  Terry Pratchett

  Austen, Clothings, Jane

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• Whether I like it or not, most of my images of what various historical periods feel, smell, or sound like were acquired well before I set foot in any history class. They came from Margaret Mitchell, from Anya Seton, from M.M. Kaye, and a host of other authors, in their crackly plastic library bindings. Whether historians acknowledge it or not, scholarly history’s illegitimate cousin, the historical novel, plays a profound role in shaping widely held conceptions of historical realities.

  Lauren Willig

  Cousin, Reality, Historical Novels

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• I don't say anything and he casually leans against my desk, picking up the novel that's sitting there. "It's bullshit," he tells me, flicking through it. "There's no such thing as Atticus Finch." I shrug. "It'd be nice if there was, though.

  Melina Marchetta

  Nice, Bullshit, Say Anything

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• You can't really succeed with a novel anyway; they're too big. It's like city planning. You can't plan a perfect city because there's too much going on that you can't take into account. You can, however, write a perfect sentence now and then. I have.

  Gore Vidal

  Writing, Cities, Perfect

  Gore Vidal, Richard Peabody, Lucinda Ebersole (2005). “Conversations with Gore Vidal”, p.137, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Like a Chinese box, the world of the novel contained smaller worlds, and inside those were yet smaller worlds. Together, these worlds made up a single universe, and the universe waited there in the book to be discovered by the reader.

  Haruki Murakami

  Book, Chinese, Together

  Haruki Murakami (2011). “The Elephant Vanishes”, p.100, Random House

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• Good novels are not written, they're rewritten!

  Michael Crichton

  Written

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• One of my heroes, G.K. Chesterton, said, "The old fairy tales endure forever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal." Discovering that the modern world can still contain the wonder and strangeness of a fairy tale is part of what my novels are about.

  Regina Doman

  Hero, Adventure, Boys

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• A novel is never anything but a philosophy expressed in images. And in a good novel the philosophy has disappeared into the images.

  Albert Camus

  Philosophy

  Albert Camus (2012). “Lyrical and Critical Essays”, p.199, Vintage

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• Don’t try to write a novel. Write short stories and then figure out how to connect them.

  Ray Bradbury

  Writing, Trying, Stories

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• Do you know how some people can do anything?” “What do you mean?” “I mean, you tell them to write a tune, they give you a symphony right there. You tell them to write a book, they write you a novel in a day. You tell them to move a spoon without touching it, they move it. If they want something, they make it happen. Miracles, almost.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Moving, Book, Writing

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• It was a great place to write a novel about book burning, in the library basement.

  Ray Bradbury

  Book, Writing, Library

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• There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in wisdom, operating in your chief character or characters. Even trashy bestsellers show people changing. When a fictional work fails to show change, when it merely indicates that human character is set, stony, unregenerable, then you are out of field of the novel and into that of the fable or the allegory. - from the introduction of the 1986 Norton edition

  Anthony Burgess

  Writing, Character, People

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• Sir,’ said Stephen, ‘I read novels with the utmost pertinacity. I look upon them--I look upon good novels--as a very valuable part of literature, conveying more exact and finely-distinguished knowledge of the human heart and mind than almost any other, with greater breadth and depth and fewer constraints.

  Patrick O'Brian

  Heart, Mind, Depth

  Patrick O'Brian (2004). “Master and commander ; Post captain ; H.M.S. Surprise ; The Mauritius command”

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• You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, "No, I don't want to watch TV!" Raise your voice -- they won't hear you otherwise -- "I'm reading! I don't want to be disturbed!" Maybe they haven't heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell: "I'm beginning to read Italo Calvino's new novel!" Or if you prefer, don't say anything: just hope they'll leave you alone.

  Italo Calvino

  Reading, Winter, Night

  Italo Calvino (2010). “If On A Winter's Night A Traveller”, p.3, Random House

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• Dear Mia, What can I say? I don't know all that much about romance novels, but I think you must be the Stephen King of the genre. Your book is hot. Thanks for letting me read it. Anyone who doesn't want to publish it is a fool. Anyway, since I know it's your birthday, and I also know you never remember to back anything up, here's a little something I made for you. It would be a shame if Ransom My Heart got lost before it ever saw the light of day because your hard drive crashed. See you tonight. Love, Michael

  Meg Cabot

  Kings, Book, Heart

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