Novel Quotes - Page 36

• [A young adult novel] ends not with happily ever after, but at a new beginning, with the sense of a lot of life yet to be lived.

  Richard Peck

  New Beginnings, Adults, Ever After

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• I love the sound of words, the feel of them, the flow of them. I love the challenge of finding just that perfect combination of words to describe a curl of the lip, a tilt of the chin, a change in the atmosphere. Done well, novel-writing can combine lyricism with practicality in a way that makes one think of grand tapestries, both functional and beautiful. Fifty years from now, I imagine I’ll still be questing after just that right combination of words.

  Lauren Willig

  Beautiful, Writing, Thinking

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• Life," Garp wrote, "is sadly not structured like a good old-fashioned novel. Instead an end occurs when those who are meant to peter out have petered out. All that is left is memory. But even a nihilist has memory.

  John Irving

  Memories, Nihilist, Ends

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• Perhaps I am too tame, too domestic a magician. But how does one work up a little madness? I meet with mad people every day in the street, but I never thought before to wonder how they got mad. Perhaps I should go wandering on lonely moors and barren shores. That is always a popular place for lunatics - in novels and plays at any rate. Perhaps wild England will make me mad.

  Susanna Clarke

  Lonely, Play, People

  Susanna Clarke (2009). “Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell”, p.707, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• He looked as if he'd stepped straight off the cover of one of those romance novels she ordered from Amazon.com so she didn't have to be embarassed by some supercilious male clerk in the bookstore.

  Karen Marie Moning

  Romance, Clerks, Males

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• A narrator should not supply interpretations of his work; otherwise he would have not written a novel, which is a machine for generating interpretations.

  Umberto Eco

  Work, Narrators, Machines

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• A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel reader is not prepared to give.

  T. S. Eliot

  Giving, Ordinary, Alive

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• This story is not and never was meant to challenge anyone's faith; however, if one's faith can be shaken by stories in a humorous novel, one may have a bit more praying to do.

  Christopher Moore

  Humorous, Challenges, Stories

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• Modesty and conscientiousness receive their reward only in novels. In life they are exploited and then shoved aside.

  Erich Maria Remarque

  Rewards, Modesty, Conscientiousness

  Erich Maria Remarque (2013). “Three Comrades: A Novel”, p.23, Random House

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• Ah, Sir, a novel is a mirror carried along a high road. At one moment it reflects to your vision the azure skies, at another the mire of the puddles at your feet. And the man who carries this mirror in his pack will be accused by you of being immoral! His mirror shews the mire, and you blame the mirror! Rather blame that high road upon which the puddle lies, still more the inspector of roads who allows the water to gather and the puddle to form.

  Stendhal

  Lying, Men, Feet

  Stendhal (2016). “The Red and the Black”, p.367, Tyché

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• Vampire? Such a provocative word, wrapped in too many clichés and girly novels.

  Matt Haig

  Girly, Vampire, Provocative

  Matt Haig (2011). “The Radleys: A Novel”, p.116, Simon and Schuster

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• It had been a good day, all things considered. I had managed rather well on my own. I opened Grandfather's Bible. This is what it would be like when I had my own shop, or when I traveled abroad. I would always read before sleeping. One day, I'd be so rich I would have a library full of novel to choose from. But I would always end the evening with a Bible passage.

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Sleep, Good Day, Grandfather

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• Novels ought to have hope; at least, American novels ought to have hope. French novels don't need to. We mostly win wars, they lose them. Of course, they did hide more Jews than many other countries, and this is a form of winning.

  Anne Lamott

  Country, War, Winning

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.51, Anchor

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• [My novel] took up the sweetest part of my mind and the rarest part of my imagination; it was like being in love and better. All day long when I was busy [...], I had my unfinished novel personified almost as a secret companion and accomplice following me like a shadow wherever I went, whatever I did.

  Muriel Spark

  Being In Love, Long, Imagination

  Muriel Spark (2001). “Loitering with Intent”, p.60, New Directions Publishing

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• The novel I am constantly writing is always the same one, and it might be described as a variously sliced-up or torn-apart book of myself.

  Robert Walser

  Book, Writing, Torn Apart

  Robert Walser (2013). “The Walk”, p.10, Profile Books

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• You can make your superhero a psychopath, you can draw gut-splattering violence, and you can call it a "graphic novel," but comic books are still incredibly stupid.

  Bill Watterson

  Stupid, Book, Superhero

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• Maybe I've just read too many novels. In novels, alcoholics are always attractive and fuuny and charming and complex, like Sebastian Flyte or ABe North in Tender in the Night, and they're drinking because of a deep, unquenchable sadness of the soul, or the terrible legacy of the First World War, whereas I just get drunk because I'm thirsty, and I like the taste of lager.

  David Nicholls

  War, Drinking, Sadness

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• My only passions were books and music. As you might guess, I led a lonely life… Not that I knew what I wanted in life - I didn’t. I loved reading novels to distraction, but didn’t write well enough to be a novelist; being an editor or a critic was out, too, since my tastes ran to the extremes. Novels should be for pure personal enjoyment, I decided, not part of your work or study. That’s why I didn’t study literature

  Haruki Murakami

  Lonely, Book, Reading

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• The novel is a meditation on existence as seen through the medium of imaginary characters.

  Milan Kundera

  Character, Meditation, Existence

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• Once I learned, I went online and ordered every romance novel I could find. They're fairy tales for grown-ups.

  Gena Showalter

  Romance, Fairy Tale, Online

  Gena Showalter (2016). “The Darkest Night”, p.160, HQN Books

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• Here I am with you & yet not for a single moment do I forget that there's an unfinished novel waiting for me.

  Anton Chekhov

  Here I Am, Waiting, Forget

  Anton Chekhov (2007). “Chekhov Plays”, p.97, Wordsworth Editions

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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. They don’t take long looks at anything, because they lack the courage. The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience, and the novel, of course, is a way to have experience.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Long, People

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

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• What I love is how pissed off Jane Eyre is. She's in a rage for the whole novel and the payoff is she gets to marry this blind guy who's toasted his wife in the attic." -Angela Argo "Blue Angel

  Francine Prose

  Angel, Love Is, Blue

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• I read *old* novels. The reason is simple. I prefer proper endings.

  Diane Setterfield

  Simple, Reason

  Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.29, Simon and Schuster

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• A new chapter in a novel is something like a new scene in a play.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Play, Scene, Chapters

  Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2009). “The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.80, Penguin

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