Novel Quotes - Page 39

• Readers understand that the books celebrate female power. In the romance novel, the woman always wins. With courage, intelligence and gentleness she brings the most dangerous creature on the earth, the human male, to his knees.

  Jayne Ann Krentz

  Book, Winning, Romance

  Jayne Ann Krentz (1992). “Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of the Romance”, p.5, University of Pennsylvania Press

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• The 21st chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change. ----- "A Clockwork Orange Resucked" intro to first full American version 1986

  Anthony Burgess

  Art, Orange, Giving

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• I didn't start running because somebody asked me to become a runner. Just like I didn't become a novelist because someone asked me to. One day, out of the blue, I wanted to write a novel. And one day, out of the blue, I started to run-simply because I wanted to. I've always done whatever I felt like doing in life. People may try to stop me, and convince me I'm wrong, but I won't change.

  Haruki Murakami

  Running, Writing, Blue

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Aug 21, 2015

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• Wasn't it his right to listen to opera, read poetry and adventure novels, go to Europe every couple of months for some reason or another, and drive his Porsche over the speed limit until he found out who he was?

  Anne Rice

  Couple, Adventure, Europe

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• Plainly, such an approach does not exclude other ways of trying to comprehend the world. Someone committed to it (as I am) can consistently believe (as I do) that we learn much more of human interest about how people think and feel and act by reading novels or studying history than from all of naturalistic psychology, and perhaps always will; similarly, the arts may offer appreciation of the heavens to which astrophysics cannot aspire.

  Noam Chomsky

  Appreciation, Art, Reading

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• When I finally got tired of arguing with her and decided to write a novel as if I was some kind of formulaic, genre writing drone, just to prove to her how awful it would be, I wrote the first book of the Dresden Files.

  Jim Butcher

  Book, Writing, Tired

  Interview with Alisa McCune, www.sfsite.com. July 2004.

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• I knew nothing about the technique of story writing, and now, after eighteen years of writing, I still know nothing about the technique, although with the publication of my new novel, Tarzan and the Lost Empire, there are 31 books on my list.

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Book, Writing, Years

  "How I Wrote the Tarzan Books" by Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1929.

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• Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks.

  Thomas Hardy

  Tess Of The D Urbervilles, Tricks, 50 Shade Of Grey

  Thomas Hardy (1892). “Tess of the D'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented”

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• Wives?" she asked, interrupting him. For a moment, he had assumed she was tuning to the novel. Then he saw her waiting, suspicious eyes, so he replied cautiously, "None active," as if wives were volcanoes.

  John le Carre

  Eye, Volcanoes, Wife

  John le Carre (2002). “The Honourable Schoolboy”, p.40, Simon and Schuster

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• No one will ever write a fantasy novel better than The Hobbit.

  R. A. Salvatore

  Writing, Fantasy Novels, Fantasy

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• I hope you don’t mind my joining you,” said Leanne. I minded. After all, she’d tried to kill me. A girl in a novel would say it was hard to believe, but it wasn’t.

  Franny Billingsley

  Girl, Believe, Mind

  Franny Billingsley (2013). “Chime”, p.277, A&C Black

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• Most people are much better at saying things in letters than in conversation, and some people can write artistic, inventive letters, but when they try a poem or story or novel they become pretentious.

  Charles Bukowski

  Writing, People, Trying

  Charles Bukowski (1978). “Women”

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• No wonder you want to be a writer. How can you not, with all that behind you? You practically are a novel already.

  Sylvia Brownrigg

  Want, Behind You, Wonder

  Sylvia Brownrigg (2011). “Pages for You”, p.110, Pan Macmillan

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• You do not learn how to write novels in a writing program. You learn how by leading an interesting life. Open yourself up to all experience. Let life pour through you the way light pours through leaves.

  Pat Conroy

  Writing, Light, Interesting

  Pat Conroy (2010). “My Losing Season”, p.323, Random House

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• This isn't a particularly novel observation, but the world is full of people who think they can manipulate the lives of others merely by getting a law passed.

  Groucho Marx

  Funny, Witty, Humorous

  Groucho Marx (2017). “Groucho and Me”, p.238, Pickle Partners Publishing

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• Suddenly his expression turned to alarm. He sprinted toward us. For a moment I had an absurd vision of myself on the cover of one of Gran’s old romance novels, where the damsel wilts into the arms of one half-dressed beefy guy while another stands by,casting her longing looks. Oh, the horrible choices a girl must make! I wished I’d had a moment to clean up. I was still covered in dried river muck, twine, and grass, like I’d been tarred and feathered. Then Anubis pushed past me and gripped Walt’s shoulders. Well…that was unexpected.

  Rick Riordan

  Girl, Past, Expression

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• And of course these days I feel like there is a nation of us - displaced southerners and children of the working class. We listen to Steve Earle, Mary J. Blige, and k.d. lang. We devour paperback novels and tell evil mean stories, value stubbornness above patience and a sense of humor more than a college education. We claim our heritage with a full appreciation of how often it has been disdained. And let me promise you, you do not want to make us angry.

  Dorothy Allison

  Appreciation, Children, Mean

  Dorothy Allison (2002). “Trash”, p.14, Penguin

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• When I read a novel that I really like, I feel as if I am in direct, personal communication with the author. I feel as if the author and I are on the same wavelength mentally, that we have a lot in common with each other, and that we could have an interesting conversation, or even a friendship, if the circumstances permitted it. When the novel comes to an end, I feel a certain letdown, a loss of contact. It is natural to want to recapture that feeling by reading other works by the same author, or by corresponding with him/her directly.

  Neal Stephenson

  Reading, Communication, Loss

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• Like a Chinese box, the world of the novel contained smaller worlds, and inside those were yet smaller worlds. Together, these worlds made up a single universe, and the universe waited there in the book to be discovered by the reader.

  Haruki Murakami

  Book, Chinese, Together

  Haruki Murakami (2011). “The Elephant Vanishes”, p.100, Random House

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• A novel is never anything but a philosophy expressed in images. And in a good novel the philosophy has disappeared into the images.

  Albert Camus

  Philosophy

  Albert Camus (2012). “Lyrical and Critical Essays”, p.199, Vintage

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• Don’t try to write a novel. Write short stories and then figure out how to connect them.

  Ray Bradbury

  Writing, Trying, Stories

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• Do you know how some people can do anything?” “What do you mean?” “I mean, you tell them to write a tune, they give you a symphony right there. You tell them to write a book, they write you a novel in a day. You tell them to move a spoon without touching it, they move it. If they want something, they make it happen. Miracles, almost.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Moving, Book, Writing

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• There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in wisdom, operating in your chief character or characters. Even trashy bestsellers show people changing. When a fictional work fails to show change, when it merely indicates that human character is set, stony, unregenerable, then you are out of field of the novel and into that of the fable or the allegory. - from the introduction of the 1986 Norton edition

  Anthony Burgess

  Writing, Character, People

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• Other people’s words are so important. And then without warning they stop being important, along with all those words of yours that their words prompted you to write. Much of the excitement of a new novel lies in the repudiation of the one written before. Other people’s words are the bridge you use to cross from where you were to wherever you’re going.

  Zadie Smith

  Lying, Writing, Bridges

  "Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays". Book by Zadie Smith, 2009.

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• Why didn’t you tell me there was danger? Why didn’t you warn me? Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks; but I never had the chance of discovering in that way; and you did not help me!

  Thomas Hardy

  Way, Helping, Chance

  Thomas Hardy (1892). “Tess of the D'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented”

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