Quotes About Exploration

I gave up the notion of writing the life of Joan of Arc, as I found that there was absolutely no new material to be gleaned on her history - in fact, she had been thrashed out.

I had a lot of romantic notions about what it would mean to cross Asia by foot.

I might just write a novel next. I don't know!

I don't begin a novel with a shopping list - the novel becomes my shopping list as I write it.

When I start writing a novel, I have no sense of direction, no idea, really nothing.

Only in a novel are all things given full play.

Every novel generates its own climate, when you get going.

That seems to be the definition of 'novel' for me: a story that hasn't yet discovered a way to be brief.

The great advantage of a novel is you can put in whatever comes into your head - it has the same shape as the human brain.

I never know as a writer when I set out into a novel where it's going to take me.

I've always liked the idea that writing is a form of travel. And I started my writing career as a mystery novelist for adults.

It's very lucky when you have an artist - whether it's a novelist or a filmmaker or a singer - whose career you can follow from the beginning and feel that you are in some way part of it, or part of the same world that it comes out of.

Novelists should be like scientists, dissecting the cadaver.

Novelists should be free to write whatever they want, to let their imaginations roam as close to or as removed from reality as they see fit.

Novelists seem to fall into two distinct categories - those that plan and those that just see where it takes them. I am very much the former category.

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.

While writing 'Bhavesh,' I pretty much chewed up every single graphic novel I could get my hands on, so all the way from the entire 'Batman' series, Frank Miller's 'Batman,' Ed Brubaker's 'Batman,' Scott Snyder's 'Batman,' all the way through 'Daredevil' to '100 Bullets,' through so many other graphic novels.

I write novels because there is something I don't understand in reality.

I get and read an enormous number of first novels.

My first two novels were set in the past, and that freed me up in a lot of ways; it allowed me to find my way into my story and my characters through research.

All novels attempt to cut neural routes through the brain, to convince us that down this road the true future of the novel lies.

I was someone who really loved fantasy novels and science fiction novels.

That's the nice thing about doing research. Whatever you do is novel, so you always have this sense of novelty, even if you are only using a new gadget.

A lot of why I do something is just the novelty of the experience.