Novel Quotes - Page 26

• They say great themes make great novels. but what these young writers don't understand is that there is no greater theme than men and women.

  John O'Hara

  Men, Young Writers, Theme

  John O'Hara (1977). “"An artist is his own fault": John O'Hara on writers and writing”, Southern Illinois University

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• Before you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Writing, Ideas, Numbers

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• I was writing novels in high school and apprenticed myself in a way both to Faulkner and to Hemingway.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Writing, School, Way

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• I always rewrite the very beginning of a novel. I rewrite the beginning as I write the ending, so I may spend part of morning writing the ending, the last 100 pages approximately, and then part of the morning revising the beginning. So the style of the novel has a consistency.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Morning, Writing, Consistency

  "Off the Page: Joyce Carol Oates". The WashingtonPost Interview, www.washingtonpost.com. October 24, 2003.

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• I don't feel I write fast. I write in longhand and do so much revision. On the page, it's so old-fashioned. I could write a whole novel on scrap paper, scribbles and things. I keep looking at it and something develops. For me, using a word processor would mean staring at a screen for too many hours.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Writing, Mean, Paper

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• I wrote a novel called "Blonde," which is about Norma Jean Baker, who becomes Marilyn Monroe, which I called a fictitious biography. That uses the material as if it were myth - that Marilyn Monroe is like this mythical figure in our culture.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Blonde, Bakers, Culture

  "Writer Joyce Carol Oates". "The Tavis Smiley Show", www.pbs.org. May 8, 2013.

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• I've always been interested in writing about people, including young children who are not able to speak for themselves. As in my novel 'Black Water,' I provide a voice for someone who has died and can't speak for herself.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Children, Writing, Voice

  CNN's Book Chat, www.cnn.com.

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• Novels usually evolve out of 'character.' Characters generate stories, and the shape of a novel is entirely imagined but should have an aesthetic coherence.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Character, Should Have, Stories

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• Often in gothic novels there's a large house, an estate, and it's symbolic of that culture. Usually it's sort of moldering or rotted or something, and sometimes it's a whole community.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  House, Community, Culture

  Interview with Tavis Smiley, www.pbs.org. May 8, 2013.

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• The field of the novel is very rich. If you're a composer, you're well aware of the history of composition, and you are trying to make your music part of that history. You're not ahistorical. In the same way, I think, if you write now, you are writing in the historical context of what the novel has been and what possibilities it has revealed.

  Salman Rushdie

  Writing, Thinking, Historical

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• When 'Midnight's Children' came out, people in the West tended to respond to the fantasy elements in the novel, to praise it in those terms. In India, people read it like a history book.

  Salman Rushdie

  Children, Book, People

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• It took me the bulk of my twenties to write one book about a family of alligator wrestlers. Whereas somebody like Steve Martin is releasing his latest banjo symphony, having just completed another movie and acclaimed, best-selling novel.

  Karen Russell

  Book, Writing, Symphony

  "The Exchange: Karen Russell on 'Swamplandia!'" by Rachel Hurn, www.newyorker.com. February 15, 2011.

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• I get and read an enormous number of first novels.

  Richard Russo

  Numbers, Firsts, Enormous

  "Russo: Novelist, fan of first books". Interview with Amy Sutherland, www.boston.com. October 9, 2011.

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• Movies have to handle time very efficiently. They're about stringing scenes together in the present. Novels aren't necessarily about that.

  Richard Russo

  Together, Scene, Handle

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• In effect I am not a novelist, but rather a failed essayist who started to write novels because he didn't know how to write essays.

  Jose Saramago

  Writing, Novelists, Essays

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• The novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled by many rivers.

  Jose Saramago

  Space, Genre Is, Literary Genre

  "Still a street-fighting man". Interview with Stephanie Merritt, www.theguardian.com. April 30, 2006.

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• When I am occupied with a work that requires continuity - a novel, for example - I write every day.

  Jose Saramago

  Writing, Example, Continuity

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• The painter paints, the musician makes music, the novelist writes novels. But I believe that we all have some influence, not because of the fact that one is an artist, but because we are citizens.

  Jose Saramago

  Believe, Writing, Artist

  "Still a street-fighting man". Interview with Stephanie Merritt, www.theguardian.com. April 30, 2006.

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• Graphic novels are not traditional literature, but that does not mean they are second-rate. Images are a way of writing. When you have the talent to be able to write and to draw, it seems a shame to choose one. I think it's better to do both.

  Marjane Satrapi

  Writing, Mean, Thinking

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• I don't like 'graphic novel.' It's a word that publishers created for the bourgeois to read comics without feeling bad. Comics is just a way of narrating - it's just a media type.

  Marjane Satrapi

  Media, Feelings, Way

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• I hate this word 'graphic novel.' It is a term publishing houses have created for the bourgeois so they wouldn't be ashamed of buying comics... I'm not a graphic novelist. I am a cartoonist and I make comics and I am very happy about it.

  Marjane Satrapi

  Hate, Publishing House, Novelists

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• I never wanted to make a graphic novel. As soon as you become a 'writer,' you have to be intelligent all the time... I like the fact that I have the right once in a while to say silly things.

  Marjane Satrapi

  Silly, Intelligent, Facts

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• People are so afraid to say the word "comic". It makes you think of a grown man with pimples, a ponytail and a big belly. Change it to "graphic novel" and that disappears.

  Marjane Satrapi

  Men, Thinking, People

  "How to film a graphic novel". June 16, 2011.

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• That seems to be the definition of 'novel' for me: a story that hasn't yet discovered a way to be brief.

  George Saunders

  Stories, Definitions, Way

  Interview with Andy Ward, www.slate.com. 2013.

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• Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Wisdom, School, Form

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