Novel Quotes - Page 34

• Novels are food for the leftover hours of life, the in-between times, the moments of waiting.

  Young-Ha Kim

  Waiting, Moments, Hours

  Young-ha Kim (2007). “I Have the Right to Destroy Myself”, p.6, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.

  John Irving

  Coincidence, Young, Forethought

  "John Irving's Last Night in Twisted River". Interview with Ramona Koval, www.abc.net.au. January 29, 2010.

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• Above my cradle loomed the bookcase where/ Latin ashes and the dust of Greece/ mingled with novels, history, and verse/ in one dark Babel. I was folio-high/ when I first heard the voices.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Latin, Dark, Dust

  Charles Baudelaire, Richard Howard (1983). “Les Fleurs Du Mal”, p.165, David R. Godine Publisher

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• This novel is fiction, except for the parts that aren't.

  Michael Crichton

  Fiction

  Michael Crichton (2009). “Next”, p.8, HarperCollins UK

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• One of the world's most tiresome questions is what object one would bring to a desert island,because people always answer "a deck of cards" or "Anna Karenina" when the obvious answer is "a well equipped boat and a crew to sail me off the island and back home where I can play all the card games and read all the Russian novels I want.

  Daniel Handler

  Home, Islands, Games

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• A writer always wears glasses and never combs his hair. Half the time he feels angry about everything and the other half depressed. He spends most of his life in bars, arguing with other dishevelled, bespectacled writers. He says very 'deep' things. He always has amazing ideas for the plot of his next novel, and hates the one he has just published.

  Paulo Coelho

  Hate, Glasses, Hair

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• Writing a novel is like childbirth: once you realize how awful it really is, you never want to do it again.

  Sarah Dessen

  Writing, Want, Awful

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• The rule for finding plots for character-centered novels, which is to ask: 'So what's the worst possible thing I can do to *this* guy?' And then do it.

  Lois McMaster Bujold

  Character, Guy, Plot

  Lois McMaster Bujold (1999). “Cordelia's Honor”, p.389, Baen Books

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• History is a novel that has been lived, a novel is history that could have been.

  Edmond de Goncourt

  Could Have Been, Has Beens

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• A novel is a conversation between a reader and a writer.

  John Green

  Real, Book, Conversation

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• Mircea must have heard us come in, but he continued what he was doing. He stood with his back to us, the candlelight on his bare skin causing his muscles to fall into sharp relief. He’d washed the river gunk out of his hair and now he threw it back, the water droplets shimmering in the light. The scene looked for all the world like a really good romance novel cover.

  Karen Chance

  Fall, Light, Hair

  Karen Chance (2011). “Cassie Palmer Novels 1-5”, p.1010, Penguin

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• A novel is a commodity that fulfills a certain need; people need to buy daydreams like they need to buy ice cream or aspirin or gin. They even need to buy a pinch of intellectual catnip now and then to liven up their thoughts.

  John Dos Passos

  Ice Cream, People, Intellectual

  John Dos Passos (1964). “Occasions and protests”

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• Why are murder mysteries so popular? There's a 3-part "formula" (if you want to call it that) for a genre novel: (1) Someone the reader likes and relates to (2) overcomes increasingly difficult obstacles (3) to reach an important goal. The more important the goal, the stronger the novel. And the most important goal that any of us have is survival. That's why murder mysteries are more gripping than a story titled "Who Stole My TV Set.

  Lois Duncan

  Murder Mysteries, Goal, Survival

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• The novels were an escape from reality in the sense that we could marvel at their beauty and perfection. Curiously, the novels we escaped into led us finally to question and prod our own realities, about which we felt so helplessly speechless.

  Azar Nafisi

  Reality, Perfection, Speechless

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• I am at a loss to understand why people hold Miss Austen's novels at so high a rate, which seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in their wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. ... All that interests in any character [is this]: has he (or she) the money to marry with? ... Suicide is more respectable.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Suicide, Character, Loss

  "Emerson: Selected Journals 1841 - 1877" by Lawrence Rosenwald (p. 768), 2010.

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• And this Atlantean Destroyer is now leading the Daimons and sending them out to battle against Acheron, who is just using us and the humans as cannon fodder to protect himself? Really, Kyros, put down the crack pipe...or go write children’s fantasy novels. I’ll bet you even know exactly who conspired to kill Kennedy, huh? I’m sure the money from D.B. Cooper is what financed your stunning collection of furniture. (Danger)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Children, Writing, Fantasy Novels

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• What do you do when Mom leaves you alone like this? (Kat) I write romance novels. (Acheron)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Mom, Writing, Romance

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• Filipinos are not a reading people, and despite the compulsory course on the life and works of Rizal today, from the elementary to the university levels, it is accepted that the 'Noli me Tangere' and 'El Filibusterismo' are highly regarded but seldom read (if not totally ignored). Therefore one asks, how can unread novels exert any influence?

  Ambeth R. Ocampo

  Reading, People, Levels

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• After all this time I found that the novel is in fact punk rock.

  Craig Ferguson

  Rocks, Facts, Punk

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• You have to wait for your mind to catch up with whatever it is it’s working on; then you can write a novel.

  James M. Cain

  Writing, Waiting, Mind

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• I'd like to emphasize that when a reader finishes a great novel, he will immediately begin looking for another. If someone loves your book, it increases the chance that he or she will look at mine. So there is no competition between writers. Another writer's success helps build a larger readership for all of us.

  David Farland

  Book, Competition, Looks

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• They didn’t have novels back then. (Tory) History says they didn’t have books, yet what’s this thing in my hand? It’s square, bound paper that’s been written on. Looks like a book to me. (Acheron) Thank you, Captain Sarcasm. How nice of you to join us again. (Tory)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Nice, Book, Sarcasm

  Sherrilyn Kenyon (2008). “Acheron: A Dark-Hunter Novel”, p.626, St. Martin's Press

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• Novels are about men and women and children and dogs, not politics.

  John Cheever

  Dog, Children, Men

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• Great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors.

  Milan Kundera

  Intelligent, Littles, Great Novels

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• I had read a Tale of Two Cities and found it up to my standards as a romantic novel. She opened the first page and I heard poetry for the first time in my life...her voice slid in and curved down trough and over the words. She was nearly singing.

  Maya Angelou

  Life, Cities, Two

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