Quotes About Novels

I read novels for entertainment rather than for edification, so I tend not to read the sort of novels that are said to illuminate the human condition.

I hope people will like my novels after I'm dead. And I hope my children think about me in good ways, by and large.

I started writing juvenile novels around 1985. I never really thought of it as a career, but more as a way to make a living.

I had a long period of writing what I think of as 'save the world' novels. 'Fledgling' was a chance to play.

When it comes to writers, I'm a huge fan of Ian McEwan. I've never taken a writing course, but reading and deconstructing his novels has been as good a lesson as any.

Charles Dickens left us fifteen novels, and in an ideal world, everyone would read all of them.

When I moved to Los Angeles, I wrote spec screenplays. I was really poor, and I thought I was just gonna do this for a while to make a little money so I could write novels. I thought movies were a second-class art form. I condescended to it - I didn't know enough to know it was really gonna be hard.

My father has always been the heart of my Penn Cage novels.

I majored in English in college, so I read the classic dystopian novels like '1984' and 'Brave New World.'

The first drafts of my novels have all been written in longhand, and then I type them up on my old electric. I have resisted getting a computer because I distrust the whole PC thing. I don't think a great book has yet been written on computer.

It's an article of faith that the novels I've loved will live inside me forever.

I have read a number of books, starting with novels, that I particularly liked.

I have no desire to write historical anything or futuristic anything - I want to find a way to get at the essence of what it's like to be alive now. The reason why great novels from centuries ago are still great is because that's what they were doing; it's like a message from another culture.

In modern novels, there is no one I want to copy. My style 'is a poor thing, but it is my own.'

I don't read novels, but my semiotics study influenced everything about the way I read and edit and write.

The truly great books are always novels: 'Anna Karenina,' 'The Brothers Karamazov,' 'The Magic Mountain.' Just as with 'Shahnameh,' I browse these books from time to time to remember how a great book works on us or to teach my students at Columbia University.

As well as writing novels and doing short-order journalism, I am also the full-time carer of my husband, who has Alzheimer's. Each day feels like a race that must be run.

All my novels are about the ambiguities that lie beneath the sharp edges of the law.

If you ask people if they enjoy crime novels, they'll say, 'Oh, my guilty pleasure is...' then name a really brilliant crime writer.

I love research. Sometimes I think writing novels is just an excuse to allow myself this leisurely time of getting to know a period and reading its books and watching its films. I see it as a real treat.

I read too many romance novels during my formative years. I have a penchant for romantic comedies. I understand why 'Romeo and Juliet' came to such a pass.

Novels demand a certain complexity of narrative and scope, so it's necessary for the characters to change.

I fell in love with words in all languages, and I read everything I could find, particularly myths and legends and histories and archeology and any novels.

My second, third and fourth novels were mistakes, essentially.