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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• I wrote four novels, but then I realized that the world didn't need me to be a novelist, but the world could use me as a nonfiction writer.

  David Quammen

  Novelists, Needs, Use

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

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• Only when you have completed a novel, or a story, can you return to the beginning and revise or rewrite.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Stories, Return

  "Writing Lessons From the Madly Prolific Joyce Carol Oates". Interview with Alexander Sammon, www.motherjones.com. September 10, 2016.

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• The idea for a novel is like a little tiny fire in a dark night. And, one by one, the characters come and stand around it and warm their hands.

  Stephen King

  Character, Dark, Night

  "Stephen King wants to reach out and grab you — with his writing". "PBS NewsHour" with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. October 6, 2016.

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• Experimental novels are sometimes terribly clever and very seldom read. But the story that appeals to the child sitting on your knee is the one that satisfies the curiosity we all have about what happened then, and then, and then. This is the final restriction put on the technique of telling a story. A basic thing called story is built into the human condition. It's what we are; it's something to which we react.

  William Golding

  Children, Clever, Curiosity

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• One thing should be put firmly. Where people have commented on that novel [The Paper Men], they generally criticize the poor academic, Rick L. Tucker, who is savaged by the author, Wilfred Barclay. I don't think people have noticed that I have been far ruder about Barclay than I have been about Tucker. Tucker is a fool, but Barclay is a swine. The author really gets his come-uppance.

  William Golding

  Men, Thinking, People

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• When I write a novel I start each morning by reading for 20 minutes.

  Richard Ford

  Morning, Reading, Writing

  "Richard Ford: Pulitzer winner, focused reader". Interview with Amy Sutherland, www.bostonglobe.com. September 15, 2012.

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• When you read a novel, you know what to expect because you've been reading novels for a long time.

  Alejandro Zambra

  Reading, Long, Knows

  Source: therumpus.net

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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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• 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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• William Goldman's Marathon Man was a novel that taught me about suspense. I was maybe 16 years old when I read it and I remember thinking, "You could put a gun to my head and I wouldn't put this book down." I loved that feeling - and want to give it others.

  Harlan Coben

  Book, Gun, Men

  "Harlan Coben on "Fool Me Once"". Amazon Book Review Interview, www.omnivoracious.com. March 31, 2016.

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• I read a lot of graphic novels - some of my favorites graphic novelists or artists are Rebecca Kraatz, Gabrielle Bell, Graham Roumieu, Tom Gauld, and Renee French.

  Matthea Harvey

  Artist, Novelists, Bells

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• I've never taken any classes or had formal training in writing novels. At its most basic, I learned how to structure a novel.

  Dennis Green

  Taken, Writing, Class

  Source: lennoxrandon.com

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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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• 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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