Quotes About Novel

The counsellor who never reads a novel or never opens a book of poetry is neglecting an important resource for empathic development.

As a novel, of course, the whole thing blows dead rodents somewhat more so than a dead-rodent blowing thing. What the hell do I know about writing novels? I have enough trouble dealing with all the shit that happens in real life. I

History is not a novel that unfolds according to established rules. But it is also not a book, rejoined Isak Levi, that can be leafed through now from the beginning, then from the end.

Every novel is an attempt to capture time, to weave something solid out of air. The author knows it is an impossible task - that is why he keeps on trying.

To make a love story, you need a couple of young people, but to reflect on the nature of love, you're better off with old ones. That is a fact of life and literature - and of the novel ever since it fell in love with love in the 18th century.

when you were barely five years old you begged me to let you read that Stephen King novel and I made you stick to Judy Blume.

then reading for an hour in bed (the latest seven-inch-thick fantasy novel he'd checked out from the library),

I wrote my first novel, McFarlane Boils The Sea, under the influence of Kelman and Proust, which is like drinking a cocktail of Bowmore and Châteauneuf du Pape. ( James Meek in interview with TMO )

Before you go ahead with a flashback, ask yourself if you can make the same impact on your reader through conflict in the now of the novel. If the answer is no, then the flashback is necessary, but remember that within the flashback all the same principles of good dramatic storytelling which apply in the now of your story—fully rounded characters, a rising conflict, inner conflicts, and so on—continue to apply.

Hard at work on a new one, huh? What's this one called?" "A Feast of Souls." "A Feast of Souls," Ben said. "Classy." I slowed, unsure whether or not I had detected a hint of sarcasm in my neighbor's tone.

Always expect the unexpected. Right around Thanksgiving, when the new Alex Cross will be out. It's called Four Blind Mice and it's a pretty amazing story about several murders inside the military.

I think the worst and most insidious procrastination for me is research. I will be looking for some bit of fact or figure to include in the novel, and before I know, I've wasted an entire morning delving into that subject matter without a word written.

As to the strangest claim in the novel: that only 10 percent of the cells in our body are human (and the rest are bacteria and parasites). This is true! There is a wonderful book exploring this topic that is as horrific as it is humorous, Human Wildlife by Dr. Robert Buckman.

Whenever I start a novel, I'm always looking for two things: a bit of science that makes me go 'what if?' and a piece of history that ends in a question mark.

I think politics is deadly to write about, frankly. If you have a political agenda and you set out to write a novel to prove that, say, capitalism should crumble, then it's going to be a really bad novel. Very few people have been able to deal with political fiction - Dickens, Dostoyevsky. But even Tolstoy got really tiresome when he was talking about the serfs. You have to let characters be characters, not [gruff voice] Mr Capitalism or [girlie voice] Miss Anti-Fur.

she could not see what good it would do anyone to read a novel of this kind. Yet she was writing it.

his look was both self-congratulatory and full of cynical cruelty. I came home, conscious of a feeling of disgust so much more powerful than usual that I sat down and made myself read the novel for the first time since it was published.

For that is of course what it means to read a novel and live in it for a while. You are viscerally inside someone else's reality. You feel and understand things you have not known before, and that is both scary and exhilarating. The world becomes more clear, reality more vivid, and your own experience larger.

Asking "what if" and answering that question is the bedrock of what the novel can achieve. The story becomes something more than one person's perspective—it reaches as far as the novelist can imagine.

I know. Aha, Oho, and every other bloody ejaculation. Let's take it as read. You're delirious at the idea of manhandling me and can't wait to start. I in turn may say I find your arrival offensive and your presence blasphemous, thus concluding the exchange of civilities and letting us get out of here. If there's anything novel or extra you want to add, you can think of it on the way home.

THE ELEGANT WORKING out of designs historical and romantic, political and commercial, psychological and moral, over a multivolume novel is a Dorothy Dunnett specialty.

Together with this outrage we may take the mutilation of the novel called The Search at the exact point where the author upholds, or appears for the moment to uphold, the doctrine that loyalty to the abstract truth must override all personal considerations;

When you're wondering whether you're obligated to finish a book, keep these wise words in mind: It is not a novel to be thrown aside lightly. It should be thrown aside with great force.

I guess when the novel started, most early novels were just sort of pornography: Apparently, most media actually started as pornography and sort of grew from there. This is not a pornographic CD-ROM, I hasten to add.