Quotes About Novels

For a long time, since story collections look almost precisely like novels, I presumed that they were meant to be enjoyed in the same way as novels.

I obviously prefer writing novels but I take my journalism very seriously, and I enjoy doing it between novels. It gives me an opportunity to move in the outside world.

When I start writing these novels, I go into them with a spirit of inquiry rather than to substantiate prejudices I had in the beginning. If you don't do that, you can't write good characters.

My novels are never directly based on a true crime incident, but I want to get the details right. I want to know how homicide detectives think, what a SWAT team might do to prepare.

Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence - a lot passes you by - simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.

Debut novels are difficult because nobody knows you... they just don't find a huge audience, because that's how the market works.

Apparently, the city of Delhi is a 'character' in my novels. I'd argue that it's a ... city... in my novels.

There are a lot of very good New York novels, but there's no single all-encompassing novel, the way you could look at any number of Dickens books and say we know London as a result of that.

I didn't read comic books, growing up. I was more of a science fiction/fantasy novel guy. I loved reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' 'Tarzan' and that kind of stuff.

Narrativity presumes a special taste for plot. And this taste for plot was always very present in the Anglo-Saxon countries and that explains their high quality of detective novels.

For many years, I read mystery novels for relaxation. But my tastes were too narrow - and, having read all of Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr, I discovered that the implausibility and the thinness of the people distracted me unduly from the plot.

Here are a few of the actors who have brought my novels to TV life: Bill Pullman, Holly Hunter, Frances McDormand, Julian Sands, Gena Rowlands, Rob Lowe, Julia Ormond, Chelsea Hobbs, Tate Donovan, Anne Heche, Max Martini, Campbell Scott, Kimberly Paisley-Williams, Alexa Vega, and the late legends Richard Kiley and Kim Hunter.

I am a person who can't teach writing or make a living in any public way, as I get confused when interrupted or overstimulated. In a classroom or crowded room, I all but blank out. So my only income is from novels.

When I was in college, I had the good fortune to have Joyce Carol Oates as my writing teacher. She told me that I could take an aspect of myself, and from that one bit of personality, I can create a character. This is what I have done, particularly in my novels.

I wrote my first five horror novels while I was teaching.

I have written more than 100 novels and novellas since 1983 - I was first published in 1985. There was an overlap of three years with my teaching career, but finally I felt good enough about my writing career to quit teaching and write full time.

Journalism is a team sport. Writing novels is golf: it's you and the ball.

Books are good.

Oh, Anne, things are so mixed-up in real life. They aren't clear-cut and trimmed off, as they are in novels.

These modern novels that leave everything unfinished annoy me... But things are often unfinished in real life, said Pat... All the more reason why they should come right in books, said Uncle Horace testily. Real life! We get enough real life living. I like fairy tales. I like a nice snug tidy ending in a book with all the loose ends tucked in.

In the evening we went to the opera to see 'The Little Minister'. It was good but not nearly so good as the book. I don't care for dramatized novels. They always jar on my preconceptions of the characters.

I loved him, but love isn't enough. All the fairy tales, the romance novels, the soap operas; they're all lies. Love does not conquer all.

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.

I'm a hopeful romantic who adores novels with happy endings, because there are enough sad endings in real life.