Novel Quotes

It's terrific, Clare," Henry says, and we stare at each other, and I think, "Don't leave me.

It was a hymn with the force of a march, a march with the majesty of a hymn. It was the song of sold...

Beginning a novel is always hard. It feels like going nowhere. I always have to write at least 100 p...

Why must some of us deliberate between brands of toothpaste while others deliberate between damp dir...

Fe es aquello que nos permite creer en cosas que sabemos que no son ciertas.

«She had Google, and she had Wikipedia. She could look up anything obscure, any words or phrases tha...

Yet if he had been asked… if he were happy… He would have admitted readily enough that he was uncomf...

I enjoy writing fiction more than writing anything else. Wouldn't anyone?

The contract between the author and the reader is a game. And the game . . . is one of the greatest ...

Relate comic things in pompous fashion. Irregularity, in other words the unexpected, the surprising,...

Sometimes things are just what they seem to be and that's all there is to it.

In her past were sweet passages, in her future rosy hopes.

He did not yet known how many commenced lefe-romances are doomed never to get beyond the first, or a...

I also need to prepare myself for the inevitability of utter boredom: Very often, single people don'...

It is better to live presently. By living thus, perhaps we can learn to understand the nature of thi...

A novelist's job is almost to be a stupid as possible, except in the cunning moment when you need to...

It's strange but as I grow older, I find myself developing more optimism. I keep inching toward the ...

A good novel can be a doorstop to despair.

To be alive, to be man alive, to be whole man alive: that is the point. And at its best, the novel, ...

The gods command that there can be only one king. But I swear that I am no better than a common sold...

Alive, and one. We are one, and while we love, death will never touch us. 'The grave's a fine and pr...

It is the form that allows a writer the greatest opportunity to explore human experience...For that ...

How I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a cen...

I think politics is deadly to write about, frankly. If you have a political agenda and you set out t...

But there is no doubt that to attempt a novel of ideas is to give oneself a handicap: the parochiali...

Novels give you the matrix of emotions, give you the flavour of a time in a way formal history canno...

I write all these remarks with exactly the same feeling as if I were writing a letter to post into t...

I write all these remarks with exactly the same feeling as if I were writing a letter to post into t...

The novel is a formidable mass, and it is so amorphous - no mountain in it to climb, no Parnassus or...

The human mind is not a dignified organ, and I do not see how we can exercise it sincerely except th...

Ladies sheltering behind men, men sheltering behind servants - the whole system's wrong, and she mus...

I swear from the bottom of my heart I want to be healed. I want to be like other men, not this outca...

I went on steadily trying to 'find out how to'; but I wrote two or three novels without feeling that...

Now, my novel begins. No, now I begin my novel—and yet I cannot decide whether to call myself I or s...

Every novel which is truly written contributes to the total of knowledge which is there at the dispo...

I thought you'd be interested in these things as a government man. Ain't you mixed up in the prices ...

It was late morning when he woke and found the telephone beside his bed in the hotel tolling frantic...

In April war was declared with Germany. Wilson and his cabinet—a cabinet that in its lack of distinc...

Writing a novel is agony.

The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are...

The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are...

You can't really succeed with a novel anyway; they're too big. It's like city planning. You can't pl...

For a moment he came near to sharing their incredible belief—it would do no harm to mutter a prayer ...

Redwing had read somewhere that one of his favourite writers, Ernest Hemingway, had been asked what ...

My blackness is spreading, Alice. I’ve been seeing and hearing things that can’t be there or anywher...

The world is a huge space, but the space that will take you in - and itdoesn't have to be very big -...

Writing a novel is like having a dream.

The new day is almost here, but the old one is still dragging its heavy skirts. Just as ocean water ...

People die all the time. Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a w...

I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was...

this is very important, so listen carefully. As I told you before, there is no middle ground with me...

I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was...

In the end, like so many beautiful promises in our lives, that dinner date never came to be.

One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an ordinar...

He thought, that all men, trickled away, changing constantly, until they finally dissolved, while th...

Novelists when they write novels tend to take an almost godlike attitude toward their subject, prete...

Marian was suddenly overcome by an appalling crippling panic. She was very frightened at the idea of...

Long novels written today are perhaps a contradiction: the dimension of time has been shattered, we ...

I am a dash man and not a miler, and it is probable that I will never write a novel. So far the nove...

The bourgeois novel is the greatest enemy of truth and honesty that was ever invented.

The dominant primordial beast was strong in Buck

I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer be...

When the evening was over, Anne could not but be amused at the idea of her coming to Lyme, to preach...

Anne did think on the question with perfect decision, and said as much in replay as her own feelings...

Whenever you are transplanted, like me, you will understand how very delightful it is to meet with a...

He looks out the window at the falling snow, then turns and takes his wife in his arms, feeling grat...

Couldn't I try...Naturally, it wouldn't be a question of a tune...But couldn't I in another medium?....

I was happy but happy is an adult word. You don't have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They ...

Nowadays people talk about the things he did as though they made sense. As though even his most disa...

If she spoke, she would tell him the truth: she was not okay at all, but horribly empty, now that sh...

How flat all sounds are at the seaside, flat and yet emphatic, like the sound of gunshots heard at a...

It must take a lot of self-discipline,' she said.'Oh, I don't know. I don't have much.' He felt hims...

The novel remains for me one of the few forms...where we can describe, step by step, minute by minut...

The first inkling of this notion had come to him the Christmas before, at his daughter's place in Ve...

When he was in college, a famous poet made a useful distinction for him. He had drunk enough in the ...

...and his eyes had that splendid innocence, that opaque blue candour of the satanically fallen. ~ T...

A poem can't do its work if you only read snippets of it.

That's sounds right. Another $5,000 went to dress up the Little League park where he had played so m...

People go around mourning the death of God; it's the death of sssin that bothers me. Without ssin, p...

Be quick, but don't hurry.

When I'm writing I don't want anyone else in the room - including myself.

My conception of a novel is that it ought to be a personal struggle, a direct and total engagement w...

The "if I had time" lie is a convenient way to ignore the fact that novels require being written and...

If professional religious leaders cannot instruct us in mythological lore, our artists and creative ...

Since the moment when, at the sight of his beloved and dying brother, Levin for the first time looke...

Among the people to whom he belonged, nothing was written or talked about at that time except the Se...

Vronsky meanwhile, in spite of the complete fulfilment of what he had so long desired, was not compl...

A novel takes the courage of a marathon runner, and as long as you have to run, you might as well be...

And once the novelist has brought us to this state, in which, as in all purely mental states, every ...

No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me ...

... novels contained something inexpressibly delicious.

How astonishingly intimate the business of fiction is, more intimate than anything that issues from ...

Suspending moral judgement is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality. The morality that...

This scene expresses the basic situation of immaturity; lyricism is an attempt to face that situatio...

He was looking for immensity. His life was hopelessly small, everything surrounding him was nondescr...

When he told F. of his disgust at the eyelid's movement, he must have been sixteen. When he decided ...

A novel does not assert anything, a novel poses questions... The stupidity of people comes from havi...

What drove such people to their sinister occupations? Spite? Certainly, but also the desire for orde...

But it was not only a feeling of guilt which drove him into danger. He detested the pettiness that m...

A novel examines not reality but existence. And existence is not what has occurred, existence is the...