Novel Quotes - Page 31

• We all dream dreams of unity, of purity; we all dream that there's an authoritative voice out there that will explain things, including ourselves. If it wasn't for our longing for these things, I doubt the novel or the short story would exist in its current form. I'm not going to say much more on the topic. Just remember: In dictatorships, only one person is really allowed to speak. And when I write a book or a story, I too am the only one speaking, no matter how I hide behind my characters.

  Junot Diaz

  Dream, Book, Writing

  "Questions for Junot Díaz". Interview with Meghan O'Rourke, www.slate.com. April 8, 2008.

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• People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, People, Without Hope

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.78, Macmillan

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• And he absolutely had to find her at once to tell her that he adored her, but the large audience before him separated him from the door, and the notes reaching him through a succession of hands said that she was not available; that she was inaugurating a fire; that she had married an american businessman; that she had become a character in a novel; that she was dead.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Character, Fire, Doors

  Vladimir Nabokov (1992). “Pale fire”

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• If I'm reading something I happen to know and gets it wrong, I just don't trust the book any more. What I ask of a novel I'm reading is that it should know a fraction more about the things I know than I do. When I'm writing...I ask myself: would I be convinced by this if I read it? If I knocked against this bit of scenery, would it feel solid?

  Philip Pullman

  Book, Reading, Writing

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• Authors also create lovable, friendly characters, then proceed to do terrible things to them, like throw them in unsightly librarian-controlled dungeons. This makes readers feel hurt and worried for the characters. The simple truth is that authors like making people squirm. If this weren't the case, all novels would be filled completely with cute bunnies having birthday parties.

  Brandon Sanderson

  Cute, Hurt, Party

  Brandon Sanderson (2016). “Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians”, p.164, Macmillan

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• Thus, in pornographic novels, action has to be limited to the copulation of clichés.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Action, Cliche

  Vladimir Nabokov (2010). “Lolita”, p.313, Vintage

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• I Need a Good Book I need a good story. I need a good book. The kind that explodes Off the shelf. I need some good writing, Alive and exciting, To contemplate all by myself. I need a good novel, I need a good read. I probably need Two or three. I need a good tale Of love and betrayal Or perhaps an adventure at sea. I need a good saga. I need a good yarn. A momentous and mightily Or slight one. But with thousands and thousands And thousands of books, I need someone to tell me The right one. -John Lithgow

  John Lithgow

  Betrayal, Book, Writing

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• If a writer writes poems and short stories and novels, but nobody ever reads them, is she really a writer?

  Jennifer Weiner

  Writing, Stories, Short Story

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• Remember, despite the fact that this book is being sold as a 'fantasy' novel, you must take all of the things it says extremely seriously, as they are quite important, are in no way silly, and always make sense. Rutabaga.

  Brandon Sanderson

  Silly, Book, Fantasy Novels

  Brandon Sanderson (2016). “Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians”, p.74, Macmillan

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• For men, as a rule, love is but an episode which takes place among the other affairs of the day, and the emphasis laid on it in novels gives it an importance which is untrue to life. There are few men to whom it is the most important thing in the world, and they are not the very interesting ones; even women, with whom the subject is of paramount interest, have a contempt for them.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Love Is, Men, Interesting

  W. Somerset Maugham (1919). “The Moon and Sixpence”

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• Reading a novel, War and Peace for example, is no Catnap. Because a novel is so long, reading one is like being married forever to somebody nobody knows or cares about.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  War, Reading, Long

  Kurt Vonnegut (1999). “Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction”, Putnam Publishing Group

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• Crazy girls did this, girls who walked like zombies through YA novels. But. Trixie felt the sting of the skin as it split, the sweet welling rise of blood. It hurt, though not as much as everything else idd.

  Jodi Picoult

  Girl, Sweet, Hurt

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• Well, this is a story about books." About books?" About accursed books, about a man who wrote them, about a character who broke out of the pages of anovel so that he could burn it, about a betrayal and a lost friendship. It's a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind." You talk like the jacket blurb of a Victorian novel, Daniel." That's probably because I work in a bookshop and I've seen too many. But this is a true story.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Dream, Betrayal, Book

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon (2005). “The Shadow of the Wind”, p.171, Penguin

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• Then I decided I would spend the summer writing a novel. That would fix a lot of people.

  Sylvia Plath

  Summer, Writing, People

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.62, Hamilton Books

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• Why honey, don't you want to get dressed?" My mother took care never to tell me to do anything. She would only reason with me sweetly, like one intelligent, mature person with another. It's almost three in the afternoon." I'm writing a novel," I said. "I haven't got time to change into this and change into that.

  Sylvia Plath

  Mother, Writing, Intelligent

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.62, Hamilton Books

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• I decided I would put off the novel until I had gone to Europe and had a lover, and that I would never learn a word of shorthand. If I never learned shorthand I would never have to use it.

  Sylvia Plath

  Europe, Gone, Use

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.62, Hamilton Books

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• the slight sense of degeneracy induced by reading novels before luncheon

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Reading, Reading Novels

  Elizabeth Bowen (2012). “The Hotel: A Novel”, p.110, University of Chicago Press

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• She had lolled about for three years at Girton with the kind of books she could equally have read at home--Jane Austen, Dickens, Conrad, all in the library downstairs, in complete sets. How had that pursuit, reading the novels that others took as their leisure, let her think she was superior to anyone else?

  Ian Mcewan

  Reading, Book, Home

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• Oh! And they read English novels! David! Did you ever look into an English novel? Well, do not trouble yourself. It is nothing but a lot of nonsense about girls with fanciful names getting married.

  Susanna Clarke

  Girl, Names, Looks

  Susanna Clarke (2009). “The Ladies of Grace Adieu: and Other Stories”, p.111, A&C Black

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• The contract between the author and the reader is a game. And the game . . . is one of the greatest invetions of Western civilization: the game of telling stories, inventing characters, and creating the imaginary paradise of the individual, from whence no one can be expelled because, in a novel, no one owns the truth and everyone has the right to be heard and understood.

  Carlos Fuentes

  Character, Civilization, Games

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• The novel is not the author's confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become

  Milan Kundera

  Life, People, World

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• She had always been an unashamed reader of novels.

  Barbara Pym

  Reader

  Barbara Pym (2015). “Quartet in Autumn: Picador Classic”, p.8, Pan Macmillan

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• That is the joy of reading fiction: when all is said and done, the novel belongs to the reader and his or her imagination.

  Alice Hoffman

  Reading, Imagination, Joy

  Twitter post from Apr 30, 2016

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• Reading a good long novel is in many ways like having a long and satisfying affair

  Stephen King

  Reading, Long, Way

  Stephen King (2016). “Skeleton Crew”, p.12, Simon and Schuster

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• All novels . . . are concerned with the enigma of the self. As soon as you create an imaginary being, a character, you are automatically confronted by the question: what is the self? How can it be grasped?

  Milan Kundera

  Character, Self, Empathy

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