Novel Quotes - Page 14

• The other thing that I got back then - the Parker novels have never had much of anything to do with race. There have been a few black characters here and there, but the first batch of books back then, I got a lot of letters from urban black guys in their 20s, 30s, 40s. What were they seeing that they were reacting to? And I think I finally figured it out - at that time, they were guys who felt very excluded from society, that they had been rejected by the greater American world.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Book, Character, Thinking

  Interview with Christopher Bahn, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2006.

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• I've had stuff of mine adapted by other people, so I've come to the conclusion that a movie is a different form from a novel and there is no such thing as a true adaptation. You have to adapt to this other thing and do it right. But that voice of the original should somehow still be there, and the original intent should still be there. So if the original writer saw the movie, the writer would say, "Well, that's not what I wrote, but that's what I meant." And if you can do that, I think you've done your job as a screenwriter.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Thinking, People, Different

  Interview with Christopher Bahn, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2006.

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• I wrote the first draft of the New People quickly but it had been percolating a lot longer. It's a hard question to answer because I'd been working on another novel for years and when I gave up on that, this one came very easily. But I think the work had been going on a lot longer than the actual writing.

  Danzy Senna

  Writing, Thinking, People

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I think about some of the novels I love - The Stranger, Disgrace, Quicksand and Passing, Giovanni's Room, The Talented Mr. Ripley. I think I'm more intrigued by characters who don't do the right thing and where we are allowed to identify with their shame/dishonesty/envy... whatever.

  Danzy Senna

  Character, Thinking, Envy

  Source: therumpus.net

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• In terms of music, each novel is different but I usually find my way into an era through the music. In this novel the New People, I listened to a lot of 90s hip-hop, which was just so genius. Also, all the musical references in the book from the Peoples Temple one and only album to Luther Vandross.

  Danzy Senna

  Book, People, Musical

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The novels are always morphing into something else now, some kind of hybrid, more of a ground that isn't so easily specified. I suppose you could call it creative non-fiction, and rather focused on the natural world, which is what I'm most interested in reading these days. At least that would be the closest thing, but my books also include some fiction, so they're difficult to pinpoint.

  Helen Humphreys

  Book, Reading, Creative

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• In some ways I spend longer at non-fiction because there are a lot of different threads to bring together. But non-fiction is more reflective than immersive. The problem with fiction sometimes is that you have to leave the real world to enter the fictional one. And that takes so much, goes into your head for so long . . . I don't know, I just feel less inclined toward that these days, and more inclined to remain in my own life. I do like really good fiction, but it's getting harder to hold my attention in a novel.

  Helen Humphreys

  Real, Long, Together

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• The reason I never wrote a novel is that I don't have what it takes to write characters, so they would all be talking differently. I lack that ability. If I were writing, they would all talk like me, and that's no good.

  Wim Wenders

  Writing, Character, Reason

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• The truth about being a writer is you do not choose the stories you tell, but stories choose you. You do not choose, therefore, characters either. Novels are like dreams you dream with your eyes open; they are books which appear in your head with the same apparent immediateness as they appear in your dreams at night. A writer always writes their obsessions and the truth is that all throughout life we end up writing the same thing in different ways.

  Rosa Montero

  Dream, Book, Writing

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• Writing a novel resembles a journey with only the sketchiest of maps.

  Ian Mcewan

  Writing, Journey

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• I've always felt that the writing I responded to most - the novels and stories that compelled me, that felt like they described the world I live in, with all of its subjectivity, irrationality, and paradox, were those which made free use of myths and symbols, fantastic occurences, florid metaphors, linguistic experiments, etcetera - to depict the experiences of relatively 'realistic' characters - on the level of their emotions and psychology, rather than in terms of what kinds of lives they led or what kind of events they experience.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Writing, Character, Psychology

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• I do write, but for now I am keeping it all in the desk drawer. I have always written. The only book that I have published was "Revolution," during the election campaign, a book that contains both personal and political chapters. I have never been happy with what I have written, including three novels that, from my point of view, are incomplete.

  Emmanuel Macron

  Book, Writing, Political

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• Film has changed vastly in the time that I've been an actor, and it's, I think, very much for the better. I think there are just magnificent films now, and they're blossoming in the way that the novel did years ago.

  John Hurt

  Thinking, Film, Changed

  Source: film.avclub.com

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• I can write any kind of novel I want, any time, and sell it, but there's not that many people watching it. Even a low-rated TV show is a couple million more people than read my books. You want to be read, in essence. If you're a television writer, you're a writer and you want people to read your stuff. You're still reaching a bigger audience, that way. That's a philosophical way to look at it.

  George Pelecanos

  Couple, Book, Philosophical

  Source: collider.com

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• I don't like novels that tie everything up in a plot-y way. I always think that's not really true of life, particularly of people in power.

  Sarah Hall

  Thinking, People, Really True

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you're going to be a second-rate artist. I don't mean there's never any overlap. You learn things in one area and bring them into another area. But giving a speech against racism is not the same as writing a novel. The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you're opposed to it. But when you're writing a novel, you don't want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that. Reality simply consists of different points of view.

  Margaret Atwood

  Loyalty, Art, Writing

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• I use all kinds of resources for researching my novels. I'm not shy about calling up experts and asking questions, or emailing, or buying textbooks and references. The Internet is always a brilliant way to find instant facts, but it's not a great way to really understand your subjects in depth without a lot of work.

  Rachel Caine

  Shy, Brilliant, Kind

  Source: www.sfsignal.com

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• I never want to feel constrained by writing a novel for a specific audience.

  Christina Baker Kline

  Writing, Audience

  "The Mystery Woman in the Field: Kristin Hannah Asks Christina Baker Kline About 'A Piece of the World'". Interview With Erin Kodicek, www.amazonbookreview.com. February 20, 2017.

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• I think the term "artist's novel" for me has referred to writing which supports an art practice or a more specifically a particular artwork or project. The nonfiction novellas and nonfiction novel I have written play a role in my artwork as objects - which I will return to, but I write the books to exist autonomously.

  Jill Magid

  Art, Book, Writing

  Source: logger.believermag.com

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• I don't think I could form my writing into scripts or novels. It's so sporadic. My writing's pretty poor. I often think, "Who's this for?" Sometimes it's impressions of the day or my life, or it's fiction. Sometimes it's about things I want to remember, or I try to write in really awful French.

  Benedict Cumberbatch

  Writing, Thinking, Trying

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• As a kid, I was a big reader. Books and theater were the way I understood the world, and also the way I organized my sense of morality, of how to live a good life. I would read all night. My mom would come into my room and tell me I had to go to sleep, so I would hide books under my bed. At first I had a tough time getting through novels, so I read plays, because a play is generally shorter and has all those tools for getting people hooked early on.

  Greta Gerwig

  Mom, Good Life, Book

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• You can't really imagine every moment of a movie in the same way that you wouldn't expect a novelist to envision every sentence of his 800-page novel.

  Wayne Coyne

  Moments, Imagine

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• I don't remember reading much at all during the writing of Eileen. I go through several years-long dry spells and I don't feel like reading at all. I was working part-time for a guy in Venice, California while I drafted Eileen. He wanted help in writing his memoir. The research had a lot to do with the 60s, so that must have informed my sense of the place and time in my novel, and perhaps even the memoir point-of-view. He was also from New England. It was a fun job. I learned a lot about motorcycle clubs, Charles Manson, hopping freight trains.

  Ottessa Moshfegh

  Fun, Reading, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I prefer reading novels. Short stories are too much like daggers. And now that I'm done with my collection I'm more interested in different forms of writing and other kinds of narrative art. I'm working on a screenplay. But when I was working on Eileen, I definitely felt like I was taking a piss. Like, here I am, typing on my computer, writing the "novel." It wasn't that it was insincere, but there was a kind of farcical feeling I had when I was writing.

  Ottessa Moshfegh

  Art, Reading, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I find it interesting that authors of fantasy and science fiction novels are rarely asked if their books are based on their personal experiences, because all writing is based on personal experience. I may not have gone on an epic quest through a haunted forest, but the feelings in my books are often based on feelings I've had. Real-life events, in fantasy and science fiction, can take on metaphorical significance that they can't in a so-called realistic novel.

  Malinda Lo

  Book, Writing, Epic

  Source: www.hbook.com

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