Quotes About Novels

Good sex is impossible to write about. Lawrence and Updike have given it their all, and the result is still uneasy and unsure. It may be that good sex is something fiction just can't do -- like dreams. Most of the sex in my novels is absolutely disastrous. Sex can be funny, but not very sexy.

You don't have anything new to say, Ethelred, but you carry on writing crime novels. I mean, it's fine. Your readers don't like new stuff. It frightens the shit out of them.

Mary Connealy is a Carol Award winner and a RITA Award finalist. An author

Without a heart I can never really know what it would be like to love someone, or ever really understand trashy novels.

Love is more pleasant than marriage for the same reason that novels are more amusing than history.

The sole agents, indeed, in the action of her novels are individual human beings. And the comedy is the outcome of their making fools of themselves and of one another.

Penelope had read several novels about such governesses in preparation for her interview and found them chock-full of useful information, although she had no intention of developing romantic feelings for the charming, penniless tutor at a neighboring estate. Or - heaven forbid! - for the darkly handsome, brooding, and extravagantly wealthy master of her own household. Lord Frederick Ashton was newly married in any case, and she had no inkling what his complexion might be

great plot twists of life will arrange themselves as they see fit, regardless of how much fretting and planning one does in advance. This is not cause for alarm. Quite the opposite; it is a comforting reminder that worrying serves little purpose. Worse, it takes up valuable time that could be better spent reading novels, taking walks in a shaded park, having friends over for tea and biscuits, and any number of equally pleasant pursuits.

Vampire? Such a provocative word, wrapped in too many clichés and girly novels.

The books do pretend, Mr. Branagan. Surely. But that is not all. Novels are filled with lies, but squeezed in between is even more that is true—without what you may call the lies, the pages would be too light for the truth, you see?

I'm tempted to shove one of my romance novels up your ass"- P.J. said sharply "But I love my books too much to desecrate them like that. I'll settle for my boot.

Perhaps I shall take my fortune and retire to the country and read novels where other characters must bother with these sorts of troubles.

It was sort of like the way writers had long been pillaging all the good phrases from Shakespeare plays for the titles of their novels, so the only phrases still available meant nothing. Soon, Emmett thought, people would be writing novels called Enter, Guard .

First novels were always at least somewhat autobiographical,

Novels had accompanied her throughout her childhood, that period of protracted isolation, and they would probably do so during whatever lay ahead in adulthood.

Although CALLIE BATES'S cancer is well into remission, she still wears her purple wig when she wants to feel like a rock star. A recent graduate of the International Harp Therapy Program, she lives in Wisconsin. Her other writing projects include a nonfiction book reflecting on her cancer experience and diverse novels. Her selection in this anthology, "The Purple Wig," is her first published work. MELISSA

All novels are sequels; influence is bliss.

It is ultimately annoying to live in the middle of a period of mediocrities – especially when one feels incapable of raising the level. I doubt if I will produce any new philosophy; I think I would already have given some signs of this at my age; but I am pretty sure that I would produce better novels if the thinking around me were a little more inspiring.

I've more or less finished with the world as narration – the world of novels and films, the world of music as well. I'm now only interested in the world as juxtaposition – that of poetry and painting.

Life is painful and disappointing. It is useless, therefore, to write new realistic novels. We generally know where we stand in relation to reality and don't care to know any more.

One of the joys of reading as a writer is that your eye becomes educated: yes, you may become more critical and abandon a higher percentage of novels halfway through, but when a writer gets it really right, the pleasure and admiration can be all the more intense.

Few of us write great novels; all of us live them.

Conque tu hermano Lázaro —me decía Don Manuel— se empeña en que leas? Pues lee, hija mía, lee y dale así gusto. Sé que no has de leer sino cosa buena; lee aunque sea novelas. No son mejores las historias que llaman verdaderas. Vale más que leas que no el que te alimentes de chismes y comadrerías del pueblo. Pero lee sobre todo libros de piedad que te den contento de vivir, un contento apacible y silencioso.

The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and thus the novelists discoveries, however old they may be, will never cease to astonish.