Novel Quotes - Page 38

• I know they are naught things, but I devour novels.” (p. 57).

  Shannon Hale

  Knows

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• I have met with women whom I really think would like to be married to a Poem and to be given away by a Novel.

  John Keats

  Thinking, Married, Mets

  Letter to Fanny Brawne, 8 July 1819, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) 'The Letters of John Keats' (1958) vol. 2, p. 127

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• He had learned from experience that what he succeeded in putting down on paper was only ever a pale reflection of what he had imagined, and so he had come to accept that this would only be half as good as the original, half as acceptable as the flawless, unachievable novel that had acted as a guide, and which he imagined pulsating mockingly behind each book like some ghostly presence.

  Félix J. Palma

  Book, Reflection, Half

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• Leo knew next to nothing about governesses, save for the drab creatures in novels, who tended to fall in love with the lord of the manor, always with bad results.

  Lisa Kleypas

  Falling In Love, Next, Lord

  Lisa Kleypas (2008). “Seduce Me at Sunrise”, p.103, Macmillan

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• I had never known the pleasure of reading, of exploring the recesses of the soul, of letting myself be carried away by imagination, beauty, and the mystery of fiction and language. For me all those things were born with that novel.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Reading, Imagination, Soul

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon (2005). “The Shadow of the Wind”, p.36, Penguin

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• You do not write a novel for praise, or thinking of your audience. You write for yourself; you work out between you and your pen the things that intrigue you

  Bret Easton Ellis

  Writing, Thinking, Work Out

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• His gaze slid over me like a veil of fire. He could ignite my deepest desires with a single glance. I decided right then and there no more reading romance novels by candelight.

  Darynda Jones

  Reading, Fire, Romance

  Darynda Jones (2011). “Second Grave on the Left”, p.40, Macmillan

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• Whenever anyone declares having read a book of mine I am disappointed by the error. That’s because my books are not to be read in the sense usually called reading: the only way it seems to me to approach the novels that I write is to catch them in the same manner that one catches an illness.

  Antonio Lobo Antunes

  Book, Reading, Writing

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• Why should I tell you?" he asked, with no small amount of petulance. "If you tell me, I will leave you alone," I said. "And if you don't tell me, I'm going to grab the nearest ghostwritten James Patterson romance novel and I am going to follow you through this store reading it out loud until you relent." Now I could see the fright beneath the defiance.

  Rachel Cohn

  Reading, Romance, Everlasting Love

  Rachel Cohn, David Levithan (2010). “Dash & Lily's Book of Dares”, p.135, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, 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 changed a little... But it's very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Believe, Reading, Different

  Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Wood (1980). “The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction”, p.158, Ultramarine Publishing

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• Get away from my ex-girlfriend, you moany little whinge-bag.' Caelen took a deep breath, like he was in pain, and stood up. His voice was low, guttural. 'I was hoping I'd get the chance to kill you.' 'You won't be killing anyone, you sad little emo git.' 'You've stood in the way of our love for long enough.' 'Just listening to you makes me want to top myself, you self-pitying Paranormal Romance novel reject.' Caelen glared. 'Stop insulting me.' 'Why? If you cry will your mascara run?

  Derek Landy

  Running, Girlfriend, Emo

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• It all adds up; never discount your efforts, because small efforts build big things. One word doesn't make a novel, but one word does begin a novel, and from that small beginning everything else follows. Even if it's just 'The', write something on that blank page.

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Writing, Effort, Doe

  FaceBook post by Laurell K Hamilton from Jan 24, 2011

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• If you tell me, I will leave you alone," I said. "And if you don't tell me, I am going to grab the nearest ghostwritten James Patterson romance novel and I am going to follow you through this store reading it out loud until you relent. Would you prefer me to read from Daphne's Three Tender Months with Harold or Cindy and John's House of Everlasting Love? I guarantee, your sanity and your indie street cred won't last a chapter. And they are very, very short chapters." Now I could see the fright beneath the defiance.

  David Levithan

  Reading, House, Romance

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• I already read everything. I read poems and plays and novels and newspapers and comic books and magazines. I read tins in supermarkets and leaflets that come through the door, unsolicited mail. None of it lasts long and it doesn't give me answers. Reading too fast is not soothing.

  Janice Galloway

  Book, Reading, Doors

  Janice Galloway (1989). “The Trick is to Keep Breathing: A Novel”

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• Read history, works of truth, not novels and romances

  Robert E. Lee

  Romance

  Robert E. Lee, Ben Wynne (2004). “Recollections and Letters”, p.221, Barnes & Noble Publishing

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• Here's what I want from a book, what I demand, what I pray for when I take up a novel and begin to read the first sentence: I want everything and nothing less, the full measure of a writer's heart. I want a novel so poetic that I do not have to turn to the standby anthologies of poetry to satisfy that itch for music, for perfection and economy of phrasing, for exactness of tone. Then, too, I want a book so filled with story and character that I read page after page without thinking of food or drink because a writer has possessed me, crazed with an unappeasable thirst to know what happens next.

  Pat Conroy

  Book, Heart, Character

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• For all my longer works (i.e. the novels) I write chapter outlines so I can have the pleasure of departing from them later on.

  Garth Nix

  Writing, Pleasure, Chapters

  Garth Nix (2014). “Sabriel”, p.221, Hot Key Books

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• Thank you, Dain," she said. "I should like that very much. I've never seen a proper wrestling match before." "I daresay it will be a novel experience all round," he said, gravely eyeing her up and down. "I can't wait to see Sherburne's face when I arrive with my lady wife in tow." "There, you see?" she said, unoffended. "I told you there were other benefits to having a wife. I can come in very handy when you wish to shock your friends.

  Loretta Chase

  Wrestling, Wife, Waiting

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• Your life story is a novel; and people, though they love novels wound between two yellow paper covers, are oddly suspicious of those which come to them in living vellum.

  Alexandre Dumas

  Two, Yellow, People

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• The truth is that every true admirer of the novels cherishes the happy thought that he alone - reading between the lines - has bcome the secret friend of their author.

  Katherine Mansfield

  Reading, Secret, Happy Thoughts

  Katherine Mansfield (1959). “Novels and Novelists”

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• The best way to write a novel is to do it behind your own back.

  China Mieville

  Writing, Way, Behinds

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• You only learn when you give your whole being to something. When you give your whole being to mathematics,you learn; but when you are in a state of contradiction, when you do not want to learn but are forced to learn, then it becomes merely a process of accumulation. To learn is like reading a novel with innumerable characters; it requires your full attention, not contradictory attention.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Reading, Character, Giving

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• They take the circuits out of people’s brains that make it possible for them to think for themselves. Their world is like the one that George Orwell depicted in his novel. I’m sure you realize that there are plenty of people who are looking for exactly that kind of brain death. It makes life a lot easier. You don’t have to think about difficult things, just shut up and do what your superiors tell you to do.

  Haruki Murakami

  Thinking, People, Brain

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• Writing novels is the hardest thing I've ever done, including digging irrigation ditches.

  Thomas Harris

  Writing, Digging, Done

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• Someone ought to write a novel about me,” said Lebedeva loftily. “I shouldn’t care if they lied to make it more interesting, as long as they were good lies, full of kisses and daring escapes and the occasional act of barbarism. I can’t abide a poor liar.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Lying, Liars, Writing

  Catherynne M. Valente (2011). “Deathless”, p.102, Macmillan

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