Quotes About Storytelling

A memoir is always the most authentic telling of a situation, but a novel gets to different places.

Only in a novel are all things given full play.

A good novel is a good novel, pointe finale. And I think what I'm writing is exactly that.

It's always fun to talk about a novel.

I always wanted to use my newspaper background in a novel.

I wanted to write a big novel, something epic in scale.

The short story can't really hold an interesting event. It can't hold a death or a war or a loss of great magnitude the way either a long story or a novel can.

The job of the novelist is to invent: to embroider, to color, to embellish, to make things up.

The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.

I'm a novelist first, and I wrote a bunch of books, and everything I write, I just find people are more interesting when there's an element of humor to it.

I've always wanted to be a novelist, so I just try to write really great narrative.

I get a lot of energy from making things up, which is why I feel I'm a novelist.

When I was a child, I loved making stories, so I thought maybe I would be a novelist.

Novelists have to be adept at controlling the flow of information, and, most crucially, they have to be in charge of the narrative.

Comic books and graphic novels are a great medium. It's incredibly underused.

When I do a novel, I don't really use the script, I use the book; when I did Apocalypse Now, I used Heart of Darkness. Novels usually have so much rich material.

In the writing of novels, there is the problem of how to shape a narrative.

I certainly think we're going to see more and more graphic novels and more illustrated novels.

Fiction novels, that's my game.

I don't write romance novels.

I think of my novels as entertainments.

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.

The financial markets tend to be just a backdrop for a novel, for a heist or something that isn't necessarily integral to it. On the whole, I don't think the financial world has been well served by novels.