Novels Quotes

We read novels because we want to see the world through other experiences, other beings, other eyes,...

After all, isn't the purpose of the novel, or of a museum, for that matter, to relate our memories w...

The English novels are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed. But one should not be t...

There is a great deal to be said in favour of reading a novel backwards. The last page is as a rule ...

I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.

What are American dry-goods? asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating t...

It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar...

[T]he success of every novel -- if it's a novel of action -- depends on the high spots. The thing to...

[T]he success of every novel -- if it's a novel of action -- depends on the high spots. The thing to...

Sir,’ said Stephen, ‘I read novels with the utmost pertinacity. I look upon them--I look upon good n...

As it is I'm a dated novelist, whom hardly anybody reads, or if they do, most of them don't understa...

Superficially my war was a comfortable exercise in futility carried out in a grand Scottish hotel am...

As it is I'm a dated novelist, whom hardly anybody reads, or if they do, most of them don't understa...

Superficially my war was a comfortable exercise in futility carried out in a grand Scottish hotel am...

As it is I'm a dated novelist, whom hardly anybody reads, or if they do, most of them don't understa...

Superficially my war was a comfortable exercise in futility carried out in a grand Scottish hotel am...

As it is I'm a dated novelist, whom hardly anybody reads, or if they do, most of them don't understa...

Superficially my war was a comfortable exercise in futility carried out in a grand Scottish hotel am...

Novels are fictions and therefore they tell lies, but through those lies every novelist attempts to ...

The battles may last for a long time, perhaps even years. There are powerful forces on both sides, a...

Up until then, whenever anyone had mentioned the possibility of making a film adaptation, my answer ...

I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.

There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequ...

If you read the novel in more than two weeks, you don't read the novel really

Every serious novel is, beyond its immediate thematic preoccupations, a discussion of the craft, a c...

Ruskin says that anyone who expects perfection from a work of art knows nothing of works of art. Thi...

In writing a novel, when in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns.

A Dickens character to me is a theatrical projection of a character. Not that it isn't real. It's re...

Landscape is to American painting what sex and psychoanalysis are to the American novel.

When you write, you write out of your best self. Everything else drops away.

Ah, Sir, a novel is a mirror carried along a high road. At one moment it reflects to your vision the...

Writers remember everything...especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, ...

The Cool Stuff Theory of Literature is as follows: All literature consists of whatever the writer th...

A novel, in which all is created by the author's whim, must strike a more profound level of truth, o...

I now understand that writing fiction was a seed planted in my soul, though I would not be ready to ...

The main question to a novel is -- did it amuse? were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? did yo...

The main question to a novel is -- did it amuse? were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? did yo...

There is no correct way to write a novel, or rather, there is only one, and that one way is to make ...

I read anything that’s going to be interesting. But you don’t know what it is until you’ve read it. ...

Now and then I am asked as to ‘what books a statesman should read,’ and my answer is, poetry and nov...

There is quite enough sorrow and shame and suffering and baseness in real life and there is no need ...

Two questions form the foundation of all novels: "What if?" and "What next?" (A third question, "Wha...

Science Fiction properly conceived, like all serious fiction, however funny, is a way of trying to d...

Formerly I believed books were made like this: a poet came, lightly opened his lips, and the inspire...

There are three secrets to writing a novel. Unfortunately nobody knows what they are.

The dull people decided years and years ago, as everyone knows, that novel-writing was the lowest sp...

I find novels compose my mind. Do you read novels too? - Reverend Finch's wife

I gain nothing but pleasure from writing fiction; short stories are foreplay, novellas are heavy pet...

I wonder what the retirement age is in the novel business.The day you die.

Early on, for better or worse, I chose whose child I wanted to be: the child of the novel. Almost ev...

[L]ife is a phenomenon in need of criticism, for we are, as fallen creatures, in permanent danger of...

A novel is never anything but a philosophy expressed in images. And in a good novel the philosophy h...

I'm a writer by profession and it's totally clear to me that since I started blogging, the amount I ...

Novels institutionalize the ruse of eros. It becomes a narrative texture of sustained incongruence, ...

Ivanov: And this whole romance of ours is commonplace and trite: he lost heart, and he lost his way....

You don't read Gatsby, I said, to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how compl...

Don't go chasing after the grand theme, the idea, I told my students, as if it is separate from the ...

A novel is not an allegory, I said as the period was about to come to an end. It is the sensual expe...

And even with the book closed, the voices do not stop--there are echoes and reverberations that seem...

When I want to read a novel, I write one.

I have come to understand something about novels," Tessa said."And what is that?""They are not true.

Until recently, I was an ebook sceptic, see; one of those people who harrumphs about the “physical p...

Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep – it can't be done abru

I like what I do. Some writers have said in print that they hated writing and it was just a chore an...

Now the son whose father's existance in this world is historical and speculative even before the son...

Novels for me are how I find out what's going on in my own head. And so that's a really useful and i...

The insufferable arrogance of human beings to think that Nature was made solely for their benefit, a...

A pessimist is a man who tells the truth prematurely.

The novel is the one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on the ethe...

Well, Mr Thomas, while I'm in favour of education, I couldn't in good conscience recommend a univers...

When you grow up to be an author and write books, you'll think you're making the books up, but they'...

When I work, I'm just translating the world around me in what seems to be straightforward terms. For...

It's my contention that each book creates its own structure and its own length. I've written three o...

It was only after two years' work that it occurred to me that I was a writer. I had no particular ex...

The point is, that the function of the novel seems to be changing; it has become an outpost of journ...

I've thought about that often since. I mean, about the word nice. Perhaps I mean good. Of course the...

I looked for any footmarks of course, but naturally, with all this rain, there wasn't a sign. Of cou...

The literary experience extends impression into discourse. It flowers to thought with nouns, verbs, ...

In daily life we never understand each other, neither complete clairvoyance nor complete confessiona...

I have almost completed a long novel, but it is unpublishable until my death and England's.

The only thing which can tell us about the novel is the novel.

Henry James said there isn't any difference between "the English novel" and "the American novel" sin...

Art, though, is never the voice of a country; it is an even more precious thing, the voice of the in...

A short story I have written long ago would barge into my house in the middle of the night, shake me...

Of course, reading novels was just another form of escape. As soon as he closed their pages he had t...

I have often wondered, Sir, [. . .] to observe so few Instances of Charity among Mankind; for tho' t...

We trust to novels to train us in the practice of great indignations and great generositie.

It’s very silly,” she said, “but I go on with it in spite of myself. I’m afraid I’m too easily pleas...

When I read a novel my imagination starts off at a gallop and leaves the narrator hidden in a cloud ...

In the post-Warhol era a single gesture such as uncrossing one's legs will have more significance th...

And she did what nobody thought of doing... she consulted Anne.

and if a rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting in def...

It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are disp...

The anxiety, which in this state of their attachment must be the portion of Henry and Catherine, and...

We did photograph albums, best dresses, favourite novels, and once someone's own novel. It was about...

She'd obviously read the book many times before, and so she read flawlessly and confidently, and I c...

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The sto...

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The sto...

A novel is always more complicated than it seems at the beginning. Indeed a novel should be more com...

Novels are just another kind of cross-dressing, aren't they?