Novel Quotes - Page 25

• The end of secrecy would be the end of the novel - especially the English novel. The English novel requires social secrecy, personal secrecy.

  Ian Mcewan

  Would Be, Social, Secrecy

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• I actually find novels that are determined to be funny at every turn quite oppressive.

  Ian Mcewan

  Determined, Turns

  "Ian McEwan: 'It's good to get your hands dirty a bit'". Interview with Nicholas Wroe, www.theguardian.com. March 5, 2010.

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• For me, novels coalesce into being, rather than arrive fully formed.

  David Mitchell

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• I'm a novelist, that's how I make my livelihood, and I concentrate on the novels.

  David Mitchell

  Novelists, Livelihood

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• Writers of novels and romance in general bring a double loss to their readers; robbing them of their time and money; representing men, manners, and things, that never have been, or are likely to be.

  Mary Wortley Montagu

  Money, Loss, Men

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• I don't read that many novels, I'm more of a nonfiction fan.

  Cory Monteith

  Fans, Nonfiction

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

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• In many ways, my entire graphic novel career was a long diversion. Originally, all I wanted to do was to be an underground cartoonist and maybe bring out a groovy underground mag.

  Alan Moore

  Careers, Long, Way

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• People have asked me why I made the first chapter of my first novel so long, and in an invented English. The only answer I can come up with that satisfies me is, 'To keep out the scum.'

  Alan Moore

  Long, People, Answers

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• I binge write. I think it's because I started seriously writing by participating in National Novel Writing Month, an online-based challenge to write 50,000 words in 30 days.

  Erin Morgenstern

  Writing, Thinking, Challenges

  "Q&A with Erin Morgenstern: Author of The Night Circus". Interview With Jennifer Haupt, www.psychologytoday.com. August 20, 2012.

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• Characters are the key to a good book. It took me several novels to comprehend that.

  Michael Morpurgo

  Book, Character, Keys

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• Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose).

  Haruki Murakami

  Writing, Cat, Slips

  "Questions for Murakami about Kafka on the Shore". www.harukimurakami.com.

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• You have to be practical. So every time I say, if you want to write a novel you have to be practical, people get bored. They are disappointed. They are expecting a more dynamic, creative, artistic thing to say. What I want to say is: you have to be practical.

  Haruki Murakami

  Writing, People, Bored

  "Haruki Murakami: 'I took a gamble and survived'". Interview with Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. October 14, 2011.

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• A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.

  Haruki Murakami

  Writing, Twelve, Lifetime

  "'When I Run I Am in a Peaceful Place'". Interview with Maik Grossekathöfer, www.spiegel.de. February 20, 2008.

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• I could have been a cult writer if I'd kept writing surrealistic novels. But I wanted to break into the mainstream, so I had to prove that I could write a realistic book.

  Haruki Murakami

  Book, Writing, Realistic

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• It's true that at the time I was fond of Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, and it was from them that I learned about this kind of simple, swift-paced style, but the main reason for the style of my first novel is that I simply did not have the time to write sustained prose.

  Haruki Murakami

  Writing, Simple, Style

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• Since I have come to America, I am often asked whether my next novel will be set in America. I don't think it will. I think I will be living in America for some time to come, but while living in America, I would like to write about Japanese society from the outside.

  Haruki Murakami

  Writing, Thinking, America

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• When I was a teenager, I thought how great it would be if only I could write novels in English. I had the feeling that I would be able to express my emotions so much more directly than if I wrote in Japanese.

  Haruki Murakami

  Teenager, Writing, Feelings

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• Turning one's novel into a movie script is rather like making a series of sketches for a painting that has long ago been finished and framed.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Movie, Writing, Long Ago

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• I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Character, Past, World

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov”, p.480, Vintage

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• If you write a novel alone you sit and you weave a little narrative. And it's O.K., but it's of no account.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Writing, Littles, Narrative

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• I've loved 'Vanity Fair' since I was 16 years old. You know, we're all colonial hangovers in India, steeped in English literature. It is one of these novels that I read under the covers at my convent boarding school in Simla.

  Mira Nair

  Hangover, School, Years

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• For a Jewish Puritan of the middle class, the novel is serious, the novel is work, the novel is conscientious application why, the novel is practically the retail business all over again.

  Howard Nemerov

  Class, Literature, Serious

  Howard Nemerov (1981). “Journal of the Fictive Life”, p.20, University of Chicago Press

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• I have questioned myself about the brutality in the last few novels. Actually in The Leopard, in hindsight, I feel I went a little bit too far with screaming blood. There are a couple of scenes that I regret and wish I had the chance to rewrite. Phantom has less blood.

  Jo Nesbo

  Couple, Regret, Blood

  "Jo Nesbø: 'I am a vulture'". Interview with Andrew Anthony, www.theguardian.com. March 10, 2012.

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• Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Fall, Writing, Hair

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.77, Macmillan

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• Writing a novel is an act of self-annihilation as much as self-discovery. You can kill whole appetites and flood whole depths while plumbing them, but if you are serious about it you also get to put something into the world that wasn't quite there before.

  Andrew O'Hagan

  Writing, Discovery, Self

  "In truth" by Andrew O'Hagan, www.theguardian.com. July 14, 2007.

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