Novel Quotes - Page 33

• In the face of the obscene, explicit malice of the jungle, which lacks only dinosaurs as punctuation, I feel like a half-finished, poorly expressed sentence in a cheap novel.

  Werner Herzog

  Half, Dinosaurs, Faces

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• It is rare and almost impossible for a novel to have only one narrator.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Narrators, Impossible

  Mario Vargas Llosa (2011). “Letters to a Young Novelist”, p.20, Macmillan

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• That's the whole burden of this novel - the loss of those illusions that give such color to the world that you don't care whether things are true or false as long as they partake of the magical glory.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Loss, Color, Giving

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2010). “A Life in Letters”, p.136, Simon and Schuster

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• I was secretly convinced that with such a marvel one would be able to write anything, from novels to encyclopedias, and letters whose supernatural power would surpass any postal limitations--a letter written with that pen would reach the most remote corners of the world, even that unknowable place to which my father said my mother had gone and from where she would never return.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Mother, Father, Writing

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon (2005). “The Shadow of the Wind”, p.40, Penguin

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• She liked Victorian novels. They were the only kind of novel you could read while eating an apple.

  Stella Gibbons

  Apples, Kind, Eating

  Stella Gibbons (1977). “Cold comfort farm”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• When we're done with it, we may find—if it's a good novel—that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having meet a new face, crossed a street we've never crossed before.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Different, Done, May

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• Love is rather impotent and pitiful: My father must have told me a million times how much he loved me, but that emotion - assuming it was even real - hardly had the strength to counter the many other acts of wrong he committed against me. Contrary to romance novels and the love-conquers-all mentality that even those of us who grow up in an era of divorce are - in response to some atavistic instinct - still raised to believe, love is always a product and a victim of circumstances. It is fragile and small.

  Elizabeth Wurtzel

  Growing Up, Father, Real

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• If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden. The two processes complement each other, creating a complete landscape that I treasure. The green foliage of the trees casts a pleasant shade over the earth, and the wind rustles the leaves, which are sometimes dyed a brilliant gold. Meanwhile, in the garden, buds appear on the flowers, and colorful petals attract bees and butterflies, reminding us of the subtle transition from one season to the next.

  Haruki Murakami

  Flower, Butterfly, Writing

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• So, what do you do when you know you have two days to live? Eat an entire Bitter Chocolate Death cake all by myself. Reread my favorite novel. Buy eight dozen roses from the best florist in town--the super expensive ones, the ones that smell like roses rather than merely looking like them--and put them all over my apartment. Take a good long look at everyone I love.

  Robin McKinley

  Eight, Cake, Two

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• She remembered the heroines of novels she had read, and the lyrical legion of those adulterous women began to sing in her memory with sisterly voices that enchanted her. Now she saw herself as one of those amoureuses whom she had so envied: she was becoming, in reality, one of that gallery of fictional figures; the long dream of her youth was coming true.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Dream, Memories, Reality

  Gustave Flaubert (1993). “Madame Bovary: Patterns of Provincial Life”, Everyman's Library

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• He shivered. His coat was thin, and it was obvious he would not get his kiss, which he found puzzling. The manly heroes of the penny dreadfuls and shilling novels never had these problems getting kissed.

  Neil Gaiman

  Hero, Kissing, Coats

  Neil Gaiman (2007). “Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess's Stardust: Being a Romance Within the Realms of Faerie”, Vertigo

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• But for me there is neither Monday nor Sunday: there are days which pass in disorder, and then, sudden lightning like this one. Nothing has changed and yet everything is different. I can't describe it, it's like the Nausea and yet it's just the opposite: at last an adventure happens to me and when I question myself I see that it happens that I am myself and that I am here; I am the one who splits in the night, I am as happy as the hero of a novel.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Monday, Hero, Adventure

  Jean-Paul Sartre, Lloyd Alexander (1964). “Nausea”, p.54, New Directions Publishing

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• The truth is that every intelligent man, as you know, dreams of being a gangster and of ruling over society by force alone. As it is not so easy as the detective novels might lead one to believe, one generally relies on politics and joins the cruelest party.What does it matter, after all, if by humiliating one's mind one succeeds in dominating every one? I discovered in myself sweet dreams of oppression.

  Albert Camus

  Dream, Sweet, Party

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Fall”, p.55, Vintage

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• You are suffering from an ailment that affects ladies of romantic imaginations. Symptoms include fainting, weariness, loss of appetite, low spirits. While on one level the crisis can be ascribed to wandering about in freezing rain without the benefit of adequate waterproofing, the deeper cause is more likely to be found in some emotional trauma. However, unlike the heroines of your favorite novels, your constitution has not been weakened by the privations of life in earlier, harsher centuries. No tuberculosis, no childhood polio, no unhygienic living conditions. You'll survive.' " pg. 303

  Diane Setterfield

  Rain, Loss, Emotional

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• A novel is not moral in the usual sense of the word. It can be called moral when it shakes us out of our stupor and makes us confront the absolutes we believe in.

  Azar Nafisi

  Believe, Usual, Moral

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.129, Random House

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• Sometimes I don't know whether I'm real or whether I'm a character in one of my novels.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Real, Character, Sometimes

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• My thoughts went round and round and it occurred to me that if I ever wrote a novel it would be of the 'stream of consciousness' type and deal with an hour in the life of a woman at the sink.

  Barbara Pym

  Would Be, Consciousness, Hours

  Barbara Pym (2006). “Excellent Women”, p.120, Penguin

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• There would be more genuine rejoicing at the discovery of a complete new novel by Jane Austen than any other literary discovery, short of a new major play by Shakespeare.

  Margaret Drabble

  Discovery, Play, Would Be

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• A good novel is one that shows the complexity of individuals, and creates enough space for all these characters to have a voice; in this way a novel is called democratic - not that it advocates democracy but that by nature it is so. Empathy lies at the heart of Gatsby, like so many other great novels - the biggest sin is to be blind to others' problems and pains. Not seeing them means denying their existence.

  Azar Nafisi

  Pain, Lying, Heart

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.132, Random House

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• nobody ever wrote to me saying"you know ender's game was a pretty good book, but you know what it really needs a n introduction!".....so be assured the novel stands on its own, and if you skip this intro and go straight to the story, i not only won't stand in your way i'll even agree with you!

  Orson Scott Card

  Book, Games, Needs

  Orson Scott Card (2011). “Ender's Game: Ender Series”, p.5, Hachette UK

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• The evasions of her little novel were exactly those of her life. Everything she did not wish to confront was also missing from her novella--and was necessary to it.

  Ian Mcewan

  Missing, Wish, Littles

  Ian McEwan (2010). “Atonement”, p.320, Random House

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• He brought his great hand to rest on an early edition of Bram Stoker's novel and smiled, but said nothing. Then he moved quietly away into another section.

  Elizabeth Kostova

  Hands, Said, Stoker

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• What are American dry-goods? asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb. American novels, answered Lord Henry.

  Oscar Wilde

  Hands, Verbs, Lord Henry

  Oscar Wilde (2005). “Picture of Dorian Gray”, p.40, Prestwick House Inc

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• This progressive effacement of human relationships is not without certain problems for the novel. How, in point of fact, would one handle the narration of those unbridled passions, stretching over many years, and at times making their effect felt on several generations? We’re a long way from Wuthering Heights, to say the least. The novel form is not conceived for depicting indifference or nothingness; a flatter, more terse, and dreary discourse would need to be invented.

  Michel Houellebecq

  Passion, Years, Long

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• A man's bookcase will tell you everything you'll ever need to know about him," my father had told me more than once. "A businessman has business books and a dream has novels and books of poetry. Most women like reading about love, and a true revolutionary will have books about the minutiae of overthrowing the oppressor. A person with no books is inconsequential in a modern setting, but a peasant that reads is a prince in waiting.

  Walter Mosley

  Dream, Father, Book

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