Quotes About Novel

Everywhere I go some silly girl asks me if I've read 'This Side of Paradise.

I've just finished a book of his, 'The Picture of Dorian Gray,' and I certainly wish you'd read it. You'd like it.

I am the outskirts of some non-existent town, the long-winded prologue to an unwritten book. I'm nobody, nobody. I don't know how to feel or think or love. I'm a character in a novel as yet unwritten, hovering in the air and undone before I've even existed, amongst the dreams of someone who never quite managed to breathe life into me.

No soy nadie, nadie. No sé sentir, no sé pensar, no sé querer. Soy un personaje de novela por escribir, que pasa por el aire, deshecho sin haber existido, entre sueños de quien no me ha sabido formular.

Literature simulates life. A novel is a history of what never was and a play is a novel without narrative. A poem is the expression of ideas or feelings in a language no one uses, since no one speaks in verse.

This isn't the case with literature. Literature simulates life. A novel is a story of what never was, and a play is a novel without narration. A poem is the expression of ideas or feelings in a language no one uses, because no one talks in verse.

Mejores y más felices los que, reconociendo la ficción de todo, componen su novela antes de que les sea compuesta y, como Maquiavelo, visten los trajes de la corte para escribir bien en secreto.

To see all the things that happen to us as accidents or incidents from a novel, which we read not with our eyes but with life. Only with this attitude can we overcome the mischief of each day and the fickleness of events.

I'm the suburbs of a non-existent town, the long-winded commentary on a book never written. I'm no one, no one at all. I don't know how to feel, how to think, how to want. I'm a character of an unwritten novel, wafting in the air, dispersed without ever been, among the dreams of someone who didn't know how to complete me

Is it truth I want? I'll go back to my novel …

In reply to an inquiry, it was explained that a satisfactory novel should be a self-evident sham to which the reader could regulate at will the degree of his credulity.

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.

Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen.

I have 50 or 60 pages on the [new] novel but I still expect to be a long time at it. It's a theme that requires prayer and fasting to make it get anywhere. I manage to pray but am a very sloppy faster.

The novelist makes his statements by selection, and if he is any good, he selects every word for a reason, every detail for a reason, every incident for a reason, and arranges them in a certain time-sequence for a reason. He demonstrates something that cannot possibly be demonstrated any other way than with a whole novel.

The novel is a more diffused form and more suited to those who like to linger along the way; it also requires a more massive energy.

The sorry religious novel comes about when the writer supposes that because of his belief, he is somehow dispensed from the obligation to penetrate concrete reality. He will think that the eyes of the Church or of the Bible or of his particular theology have already done the seeing for him, and that his business is to rearrange this essential vision into satisfying patterns, getting himself as little dirty in the process as possible.

Flannery revealed she had been working on the novel "a year and a half and will probably be two more years finishing it." She described her writing habits in a letter dated July 13: "I must tell you how I work. I don't have my novel outlined and I have to write to discover what I am doing.

I really like all of the characters in 'The Secret History' by Donna Tartt, especially Camilla, the one girl. I find her fascinating.

I tried writing a novel, but plays were the thing that kept feeding me, asking me to come back, sit down and be with them.

'The Dovekeepers' is a fantastic novel written by Alice Hoffman; it was a bestselling novel, and I fell in love with the book and bought the rights to it.

One of the most interesting female characters I've written about was Meg Riddoch, the lead character in 'The Thompson Gunner'.

When you have a novel set in a fictional history, you still should get your history right.

I like a novel to have a certain amount of dead time and filler - unremarkable scenery, descriptions of getting from point A to point B, dialogue in which not much is said - in between the parts that are electric. With a long work that you don't read in one sitting, I think that makes for the best reading experience.