Quotes About Novels

I start with theory rather than people. I don't like novels which have no theoretical or philosophical underpinning. I hate the contemporary novel where people just sit and talk to each other about their relationships.

I do mourn my characters. I wrote an essay once where I was sure that far back in a marsh there was a hummock - a little hill of hardwoods - and an old farm house, where all the heroines in my novels lived together with all my beloved dead dogs. I've discussed this with my therapist, naturally. He says it's okay in fair amounts.

With almost every book I've written, my secret target audience is the young therapist. In this way, I am staying in my professorial role; I'm writing teaching stories and teaching novels.

I had always been literary, in the sense of loving poetry and discovering novels, but I found my voice, as they say, in an office full of elderly people who looked after blind ex-servicemen.

Novels often thin themselves out to a watery hue - some even start that way - and at times seem to only ride along the surface of things, giving us what we already know, reporting the news that is just news.

Size matters in fiction, but so does lack of size. Everything else being equal, fat novels tend to be perceived as serious, very thin ones as more honest, more real. Writers address these age-old expectations by filling their big books with philosophy and cramming their little ones with feeling.

Penelope Fitzgerald's nine novels are thin enough that if you were so inclined, you could take her entire literary output down from the shelf with a single stretched hand. You'd be holding an eclectic bunch.

The rise of the dramas in the thirteenth century, and the rise of the great novels in a later period, together with their frank glorification of love and the joys of life, may be called the Third Renaissance.

Hollywood called just as I crested thirty. My novels did not and still do not interest them, but my writing ability did.

I sort of half read Thomas Hardy's 'The Mayor of Casterbridge.' It was assigned in 10th grade, and I just couldn't get into it. About seven years later, I rediscovered Hardy and consumed four of his novels in a row.

My first two novels featured narrators who were aggressively unattached: They couldn't form any sort of genuine relationship. So I had thoroughly explored the geography of loneliness and isolation.

I have a particular disdain for Islamic extremism, and of course, in both 'The Kite Runner' and 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' that's obvious.

Just as all writers were beginners once, so were all novels. They all went through rough stages, even the ones by our most hallowed masters.

Todas las novelas son historias de amor. Voy a sonar cursi, pero es lo que pienso: podemos prescindir de todo, menos del amor.

Women do not usually write novels of the type favoured by men but men are known to write novels of the type favoured by women. Some people find this odd.

I'd been reading modern French novels, and William Faulkner as well. I knew what love was supposed to be: obsession, with undertones of nausea.

Novels, since the birth of the genre, have been full of rejected, seduced, and abandoned maidens, whose proper fate is to die...

You know I don't read novels,' she said and, trying to equal his jesting mood, went on: 'Besides, you one said it was the height of bad form for husbands and wives to love each other.' 'I once said too God damn many things,' he retorted abruptly and rose to his feet.

You know I don't read novels,' she said and, trying to equal his jesting mood, went on: 'Besides, you once said it was the height of bad form for husbands and wives to love each other.' 'I once said too God damn many things,' he retorted abruptly and rose to his feet.

I've read enough novels to know just how much time & energy it takes to fall in love and I just don't have the time

I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.

If I had the luxury of working as a full time writer, I think you would see novels appearing on a much more regular, and frequent, basis.

And they say an addiction to novels is bad for you.

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.