Quotes About Novels

I've never been good with deadlines. My early novels, I wrote by myself. No one knew I was writing a novel; I didn't have a contract.

I'd like to think that my films are personal enough to exist without hearkening back to their respective novels.

I'm very interested in writing - it just takes so much discipline, whether it's short stories or novels.

The best novels are those that are important without being like medicine; they have something to say, are expansive and intelligent but never forget to be entertaining and to have character and emotion at their centre.

Even the best novels have their share of stinker lines.

Do your bit to save humanity from lapsing back into barbarity by reading all the novels you can.

I'm an enormous fan of American literature, and especially the great novels of Larry McMurtry, 'Lonesome Dove,' Cormac McCarthy, Elmore Leonard.

In the writing of novels, there is the problem of how to shape a narrative.

Novels usually evolve out of 'character.' Characters generate stories, and the shape of a novel is entirely imagined but should have an aesthetic coherence.

I've read every single fantasy novel there is. I mean, I would challenge a lot of people to read more fantasy novels than I have.

I wrote about four novels before I wrote a word of journalism.

People respect nonfiction but they read novels.

I didn't want to write a biographie romancee especially since I already write novels, nor did I want to challenge the rules of the biography game, arbitrary as those rules might be.

I spent many years of my life as an economist and demographer. I was finally distracted by writing my novels and poetry. I'm enormously happy that was the case. I feel that with writing I have found my metier.

I certainly think we're going to see more and more graphic novels and more illustrated novels.

Novels teach you that actions have consequences. They help you grow up.

I tell you, once a girl's got a dose of novels she's a pushover for iambic pentameter.

I've always been ambidextrous, writing short stories and novels, and I pretty much have been writing a novel and a handful of short stories every year since '91.

All of my novels are democracies.

I write novels about women, except for one: 'Rococo', about a man, a New Jersey decorator. But even that book had a woman on the cover.

My first two novels were very black comedies.

All novels must be autobiographical because I am the only material that I know. All of the characters are me. But at the same time, a novel is never autobiographical even if it describes the life of the author. Literary writing is a completely different medium.

I think sex is a very minor part of most romance novels.

Iris Murdoch did influence my early novels very much, and influence is never entirely good.