Novel Quotes - Page 3

• I have a different purpose in writing each novel. Some of them seem more similar than others, but the purposes are always different.

  Jesse Ball

  Writing, Different, Purpose

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I think the recent cluster of WWII novels is so good because we have reached an optimal distance from the war. Just as a lens has its focal length, the novel also has its best distance from the action.

  Chris Cleave

  War, Distance, Thinking

  "'We Don't Know Our Hearts Until Life Puts Us to the Test' - Chris Cleave on 'Everyone Brave Is Forgiven'". Interview with Erin Kodicek, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 31, 2016.

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• [My maternal grandmother ] was a teacher in London and elsewhere during the war, although the children she taught were not the "lost children" who feature in the novel - those come from my research.

  Chris Cleave

  Teacher, Children, War

  Source: www.omnivoracious.com

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• I write in the novel's afterword that our recent wars "finish not with victory or defeat but with a calendar draw-down date and a presumption that we shall never be reconciled with the enemy".

  Chris Cleave

  War, Writing, Enemy

  ""We Don't Know Our Hearts Until Life Puts Us to the Test"--Chris Cleave on 'Everyone Brave Is Forgiven'". Interview With Erin Kodicek, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 31, 2016.

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• The language of the novel differs from the just-the-facts language of the old tales. It's robust and earthy, sometimes even baroque.

  Marisa Silver

  Facts, Language, Sometimes

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I'm very secretive. I'll write a whole novel and revise it, which might take me two years or more, and the people I know best don't know what I'm writing about.

  Alice Mattison

  Writing, Years, Two

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I get to a certain point, and I think in a novel it's about the third draft, when I want other eyes on it.

  Alice Mattison

  Eye, Thinking, Want

  Source: therumpus.net

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• We have to diversify, we have to find work we can do that helps other people while helping ourselves, work that has to do with writing that isn't necessarily just writing saleable novels or getting huge advances.

  Alice Mattison

  Writing, Helping Others, People

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I think people feel for a long time that they ought to know how to write a novel in two drafts.

  Alice Mattison

  Writing, Thinking, Two

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The question I hate the most is "How did you DO it - write novels and raise your children simultaneously!" I mean, do MALE authors get asked that??

  Jodi Picoult

  Children, Hate, Writing

  Source: nudge-book.com

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• I had read [Charles] Dickens's novels were often published serially. I thought it would be fun to write a book, just sitting down and writing a chapter every day, not knowing what would happen next. So that's how I wrote the first draft. And then of course I had to go back and make sure everything worked and change things.

  Lynne Rae Perkins

  Fun, Book, Writing

  Source: www.hbook.com

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• It really does feel, partly because of graphic novels kids read, like there's a lot of freedom with how you can use both images and words, because we think in both of those ways.

  Lynne Rae Perkins

  Kids, Thinking, Doe

  Source: www.hbook.com

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• Movies and novels, the two things that informed and taught me the most, are forms of escapism. I thought that was how life could look if you wanted it to.

  Jason Diamond

  Two, Looks, Taught

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I hate it when people tell me the end of the story because my mother always read the last page of a novel first to see whether she wanted to read it. It was a strange reading habit.

  Alice Hoffman

  Mother, Hate, Reading

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

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• My Italian-American heritage, of which I'm very proud and with which I identify strongly, surfaces in several of my novels.

  Wally Lamb

  Italian, Heritage, Proud

  Source: rssfeeds.usatoday.com

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• I try to stick with what moves me or teaches me about myself, same thing I hope the novels do for others.

  Wally Lamb

  Moving, Trying, Sticks

  Source: rssfeeds.usatoday.com

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• I won't read novels while writing novels.

  Wally Lamb

  Writing

  Source: rssfeeds.usatoday.com

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• I've read about eight or ten of the original novels, and one of them is where Maigret's in bed for the entire story! His wife is running around and solving the case!

  Rowan Atkinson

  Running, Eight, Wife

  Source: news.tvguide.co.uk

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• I knew from previous books not to count on anything in terms of sales. My first novel - -The Raven's Bride, about Sam Houston's disastrous first marriage - -sold well and got attention, but my second book - -Promised Lands, about the Texas Revolution - -didn't.

  Elizabeth Crook

  Book, Texas, Land

  Source: www.elizabethcrookbooks.com

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• I'm halfway through a novel set in two time frames - Austin in the 1960's and Alpine (Texas) in present day. It started out to be a small, lighthearted, humorous book about family relationships; I was tired of writing war stories and tragedies.

  Elizabeth Crook

  War, Humorous, Book

  Source: www.elizabethcrookbooks.com

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• I read novels for entertainment rather than for edification, so I tend not to read the sort of novels that are said to illuminate the human condition.

  Richard Dawkins

  Entertainment, Edification, Said

  Source: newrepublic.com

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• I'm easily persuaded that a really good novelist who gets inside somebody else's head could be serving a valuable purpose. I enjoy satirical novels that take a wry, humorous, ironic look at modern life.

  Richard Dawkins

  Humorous, Ironic, Novelists

  Source: newrepublic.com

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• The book that really, really shaped my politics and has forever is Arthur Koestler's "Darkness at Noon," which is a novel based on terrible fact about what it was like in Russia during Stalin's time when people actually believed that to get to the point where the Proletariat would triumph, anything that was necessary to be done should be done; the means didn't count.

  Nat Hentoff

  Book, Mean, Russia

  Source: thedailyhatch.org

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• The woman who led [downed airmen] was named Andrée De Jongh and her story - one of heroism and peril and astounding courage - became the inspiration for my novel.

  Megan Chance

  Inspiration, Heroism, Stories

  Source: www.omnivoracious.com

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• Of course, there are hundreds of novels and authors that have influenced me. But to choose three, they are: Stephen King/The Stand (and really most of his books); Anne Rice/The Witching Hour; and Pat Conroy/The Prince of Tides. These authors write my favorite kind of book - epic feel, gorgeous prose, unique characters, and a pace that keeps you turning the pages. From them, I learned a lot about characterization, pacing, prose, voice, and originality.

  Megan Chance

  Kings, Book, Character

  Source: www.omnivoracious.com

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