Novel Quotes - Page 32

• It would have been impossible for me to have told anyone what I derived from these novels, for it was nothing less than a sense of life itself.

  Richard Wright

  Book, Support, Abiding

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• Life is painful and disappointing. It is useless, therefore, to write new realistic novels. We generally know where we stand in relation to reality and don’t care to know any more.

  Michel Houellebecq

  Writing, Reality, Useless

  Michel Houellebecq (2005). “H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life”, McSweeney's

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• I know California isn't a real destination. You can't get there from New Jersey, not simply by following a line drawn on a map. The process of arrival is more subtle and complex. It involves acts of contrition. You must appease the gods. You must find novel forms of penance. You must tattoo your children and look at the wonder. It's about conjuring and awakening and intuitions you wish you never had.

  Kate Braverman

  Tattoo, Children, Real

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• I loved them all the way one loves at any age -- if it's real at all -- obsessively, painfully, with wild exultation, with guilt, with conflict; I wrote poems to and about them, I put them into novels (disguised of course); I brooded upon why they were as they were, so often maddening don't you know? I wrote them ridiculous letters. I lived with their faces. I knew their every gesture by heart. I stalked them like wild animals. I studied them as if they were maps of the world -- and in a way I suppose they were.

  May Sarton

  Real, Heart, Animal

  May Sarton (2014). “Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing: A Novel”, p.19, Open Road Media

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• Relate comic things in pompous fashion. Irregularity, in other words the unexpected, the surprising, the astonishing, are essential to and characteristic of beauty. Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony. The blend of the grotesque and the tragic are attractive to the mind, as is discord to blasé ears. Imagine a canvas for a lyrical, magical farce, for a pantomime, and translate it into a serious novel. Drown the whole thing in an abnormal, dreamy atmosphere, in the atmosphere of great days … the region of pure poetry.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Fashion, Two, Mind

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• She said writting novels was like childbirth: if you truly remembered how awful it got, you'd never do it again.

  Sarah Dessen

  Awful, Said, Childbirth

  Sarah Dessen (2004). “This Lullaby”, p.125, Penguin

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• It is as true for the writer as for the reader that any novel worth its ink should be an experience first and foremost—not an essay, not a statement, not an orderly rollout of themes and propositions. All of which is to say: stories, too, are wild things.

  David Wroblewski

  Ink, Stories, Firsts

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• She understood now why her friend Elizabeth, with her near-genius, analytical mind gave wide berth to murder mysteries, psychological thrillers, and horror stories, and read only romance novels. Because, by God, when a woman picked up one of those steamy books, she had a firm guarantee that there would be a Happily-Ever-After. That though the world outside those covers could bring such sorrow and disappointment and loneliness, between those covers, the world was a splendid place to be.

  Karen Marie Moning

  Disappointment, Loneliness, Book

  FaceBook post by Karen Marie Moning from Oct 27, 2014

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• Daisy had known the novel was silly even as she had read it, but that had not detracted one bit from her enjoyment.

  Lisa Kleypas

  Silly, Daisies, Enjoyment

  Lisa Kleypas (2009). “Scandal in Spring”, p.29, Harper Collins

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• [Kafka] transformed the profoundly antipoetic material of a highly bureaucratized society into the great poetry of the novel; he transformed a very ordinary story of a man who cannot obtain a promised job . . . into myth, into epic, into a kind of beauty never before seen.

  Milan Kundera

  Jobs, Epic, Men

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• Inside the envelope with the letter was a little Princess Leia action figure USB flash drive. For me to store my novel on, since he was right - I never back up my computer's hard drive. The sight of it - it's Princess Leia in her Hoth outfit, my favorite of her costumes (how had he remembered?) brought tears to my eyes.

  Meg Cabot

  Princess, Eye, Sight

  "Crowning Glory". Book by Meg Cabot, 2009.

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• I am a man and alive. For this reason I am a novelist. And, being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, te scientist, the philosopher, and the poet, who are all great masters of different bits of man alive, but never get the whole hog....Only in the novel are all things given full play.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Men, Play, Novelists

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• The novels that attract me most are those that create an illusion of transparency around a knot of human relationships as obscure, cruel, and perverse as possible.

  Italo Calvino

  Illusion, Obscure, Knots

  "If On A Winter's Night A Traveller".

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• Compared to a novel, a film is like an economy pizza where there are no olives, no ham, no anchovies, no mushrooms, and all you’ve got is the dough.

  Louis de Bernieres

  Mushrooms, Ham, Olives

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• The door of the novel, like the door of the poem, also shuts. But not so fast, nor with such manic, unanswerable finality.

  Sylvia Plath

  Doors, Manic, Finality

  Sylvia Plath (1994). “Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams”

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• Writing's funny, it's like walking down a hall in the dark looking for the light switch, and suddenly you find it, flip it on, and then you discover the hallway you passed through is papered with the novel you've written.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Writing, Dark, Light

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• It was like being in a Jane Austen novel, but one with far less clothing.

  Terry Pratchett

  Austen, Clothings, Jane

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• Whether I like it or not, most of my images of what various historical periods feel, smell, or sound like were acquired well before I set foot in any history class. They came from Margaret Mitchell, from Anya Seton, from M.M. Kaye, and a host of other authors, in their crackly plastic library bindings. Whether historians acknowledge it or not, scholarly history’s illegitimate cousin, the historical novel, plays a profound role in shaping widely held conceptions of historical realities.

  Lauren Willig

  Cousin, Reality, Historical Novels

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• I don't say anything and he casually leans against my desk, picking up the novel that's sitting there. "It's bullshit," he tells me, flicking through it. "There's no such thing as Atticus Finch." I shrug. "It'd be nice if there was, though.

  Melina Marchetta

  Nice, Bullshit, Say Anything

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• You can't really succeed with a novel anyway; they're too big. It's like city planning. You can't plan a perfect city because there's too much going on that you can't take into account. You can, however, write a perfect sentence now and then. I have.

  Gore Vidal

  Writing, Cities, Perfect

  Gore Vidal, Richard Peabody, Lucinda Ebersole (2005). “Conversations with Gore Vidal”, p.137, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Good novels are not written, they're rewritten!

  Michael Crichton

  Written

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• One of my heroes, G.K. Chesterton, said, "The old fairy tales endure forever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal." Discovering that the modern world can still contain the wonder and strangeness of a fairy tale is part of what my novels are about.

  Regina Doman

  Hero, Adventure, Boys

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• Sir,’ said Stephen, ‘I read novels with the utmost pertinacity. I look upon them--I look upon good novels--as a very valuable part of literature, conveying more exact and finely-distinguished knowledge of the human heart and mind than almost any other, with greater breadth and depth and fewer constraints.

  Patrick O'Brian

  Heart, Mind, Depth

  Patrick O'Brian (2004). “Master and commander ; Post captain ; H.M.S. Surprise ; The Mauritius command”

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• You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, "No, I don't want to watch TV!" Raise your voice -- they won't hear you otherwise -- "I'm reading! I don't want to be disturbed!" Maybe they haven't heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell: "I'm beginning to read Italo Calvino's new novel!" Or if you prefer, don't say anything: just hope they'll leave you alone.

  Italo Calvino

  Reading, Winter, Night

  Italo Calvino (2010). “If On A Winter's Night A Traveller”, p.3, Random House

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• Dear Mia, What can I say? I don't know all that much about romance novels, but I think you must be the Stephen King of the genre. Your book is hot. Thanks for letting me read it. Anyone who doesn't want to publish it is a fool. Anyway, since I know it's your birthday, and I also know you never remember to back anything up, here's a little something I made for you. It would be a shame if Ransom My Heart got lost before it ever saw the light of day because your hard drive crashed. See you tonight. Love, Michael

  Meg Cabot

  Kings, Book, Heart

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