Novel Quotes - Page 40

• Twentieth-century Russian literature has produced nothing special except perhaps one novel and two stories by Andrei Platonov, who ended his days sweeping streets.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Two, Special, Stories

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• Novel-writing is the only place where someone who would have liked to do anything can still do that vicariously.

  Richard Power

  Writing, Novel Writing, Stills

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• A good novel is worth more then the best scientific study.

  Saul Bellow

  Writing, Study

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• The same parts of my brain get as excited as when I study bio or read a novel and write a paper on it.

  Utada Hikaru

  Writing, Brain, Paper

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• I was very influenced by The Magic Mountain. It's a book that had a huge impact on me. I loved that as a shape for a novel: put a bunch of people in a beautiful place, give them all tuberculosis, make them all stay in a fur sleeping bag for several years and see what happens.

  Ann Patchett

  Beautiful, Book, Sleep

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• You need a theme in a picture book just as much or maybe even more than you need it in a novel.

  Eve Bunting

  Book, Needs, Theme

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• All my life I have been trying to learn, to read, to see and hear, and to write. At sixty-five I began my first novel and after the five years, lacking a month, I took to finish it, I was still traveling, still a seeker.

  Carl Sandburg

  Life, Writing, Learning

  Carl Sandburg (2003). “The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg”, p.31, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• My goal with The Adventures of Captain Underpants was to invent a style which was almost identical to that of a picture book - in a novel format. So I wrote incredibly short chapters and tried to fill each page with more pictures than words. I wanted to create a book that kids who don't like to read would want to read.

  Dav Pilkey

  Book, Adventure, Kids

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• What I couldn't help noticing was that I learned more about the novel in a morning by trying to write a page of one than I'd learned in seven years or so of trying to write criticism

  Philip Pullman

  Morning, Writing, Years

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• I write short stories when a little idea occurs to me, that I know isn't a part of a novel that will stand by itself and should be concentrated.

  Roddy Doyle

  Writing, Ideas, Stories

  "Commitments" Author Pens Short Goodbyes To Youth". Interview with Scott Simon, www.npr.org. May 21, 2011.

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• I never accepted why there should be some invisible, wavy cutoff line separating Great Fiction from phosphorescent beauties and dollhouse miniatures, novels that contain a whole world in a snow globe.

  James Wolcott

  Snow, Fiction, World

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• I invented the historical spy novel.

  Alan Furst

  Historical, Spy

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• I write what I call 'novels of consolation' for people who are bright and sophisticated.

  Alan Furst

  Writing, People, Sophisticated

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• My novels are about the European reality, not about chases. You want chases, get somebody else's books.

  Alan Furst

  Book, Reality, Want

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• I wrote a novel about Israelis who live their own lives on the slope of a volcano. Near a volcano one still falls in love, one still gets jealous, one still wants a promotion, one still gossips.

  Amos Oz

  Falling In Love, Jealous, Volcanoes

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• When I was growing up, I always read horror books, while my sister read romance novels.

  Dorothy Allison

  Sister, Growing Up, Book

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I've never made an outline for any novel that I've written. Never.

  Don DeLillo

  Made, Written, Outlines

  "Don DeLillo: "I'm not trying to manipulate reality – this is what I see and hear". Interview with Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. August 8, 2010.

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• I save the best of myself for novels, and I believe it shows

  Anne Tyler

  Believe, Shows, Save Nature

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• There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author. The term is 'idiot'.

  Larry Niven

  Mistake, Character, Belief

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• Someone once wrote that a novel should deliver a series of small astonishments. I get the same thing spending an hour with you.

  E. Lockhart

  Astonishment, Hours, Should

  E. Lockhart (2014). “We Were Liars”, p.46, Delacorte Press

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• I did not have a chance to write novels until my youngest child started school fulltime

  Anne McCaffrey

  Children, Writing, School

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• I would recommend the short story form, which is a lot harder to write since you have to be so careful with words, until there is plenty of time to doodle through a novel

  Anne McCaffrey

  Writing, Stories, Form

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• Anyway, several rewrites later, Del Rey Books did publish my first novel, and it did become the first work of fiction on the New York Times trade paperback bestseller list.

  Terry Brooks

  New York, Book, Fiction

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• Something that you should take particular notice of is the fact that the best scripts have very few explanatory passages. Adding explanation to the descriptive passages of a screenplay is the most dangerous trap you can fall into. It’s easy to explain the psychological state of a character at a particular moment, but it’s very difficult to describe it through the delicate nuances of action and dialogue. Yet it is not impossible.

  Akira Kurosawa

  Believe, Fall, Character

  "Something Like An Autobiography".

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• I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have by reading novels.

  Ernest Gaines

  Reading, Writing, People

  Ernest J. Gaines (2007). “Mozart and Leadbelly”, p.27, Vintage

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