Quotes About Novels

As a kid I wanted to write science fiction, and I was never without a book. Later I really got into being a scientist and never thought I'd be writing novels.

When I was in my early 20s, my dream was to write mystery novels. I wanted to do what my favourite crime writer, Ross Macdonald, did - crank out a book a year. The only problem - and it was a considerable one - was that I stank.

I've always had a compassion for characters in novels - the sense that they are, whatever they might think, living in a world that has a shape they don't know and can't finally alter.

Sometimes I ask myself if writing novels is even respectable.

When I write, I get glimpses into future novels.

I have tried very hard as a novelist to say, 'Novels are about individuals and especially larger than life individuals.'

I read mostly fiction, a lot of 19th-century novels.

I never plan my novels because if I know what is going to happen, it bores me rigid. I let the story tell itself.

I'm just interested in serialization in fiction. I'm fascinated by it. I love the 19th-century novels. I'm interested in ways to bring that back to fiction.

I want a career writing these novels that I can be proud of. And then I want one as a screenwriter.

My first two novels were set in the past, and that freed me up in a lot of ways; it allowed me to find my way into my story and my characters through research.

When I was young, about 18 or 19, I read all the Dostoyevsky novels, which made me want to go to St. Petersburg. So I went, and I was so inspired.

I was one of those kids who was always seeking the truth, and I first looked for truth by reading novels. It took quite a long time for me to realize there are better ways.

I feel like it's hard to get into historical novels where you know what the story is far too well.

I'd probably still be a financial journalist now if it weren't for writing novels. Mmm. Fun! I'm much happier writing novels!

My novels are all ideas.

I have many books that I want to write; I'd like to think that I'll be around for another 20 years or so and write another dozen novels, probably some sort of imaginative literature... Never again another seven-volume saga.

I've written some standalone novels, but a book series allows fans in. There's much more intense involvement.

As far as I am concerned, I write novels, and other people can do the labelling.

When I was little, my grandma used to get romance novels, and she would get hundreds of these, and she'd read a dozen a month.

I never read detective novels. I started out in graduate school writing a more serious book. Right around that time I read 'The Day of the Jackal' and 'The Exorcist'. I hadn't read a lot of commercial fiction, and I liked them.

I love getting cookbooks - people will give them to me, and I read them like novels and file everything away.

I make a rod for my own back because people see my novels as quasi documentaries. But it is never history that's the main event of my books. It's my characters.

I love novels, but I'm not a novelist. I'm just a dramatist, which means I write lines for actors. That's all I have ever wanted to do.