“Great fiction shows us not how to conduct our behavior but how to feel. Eventually, it may show us how to face our feelings and face our actions and to have new inklings about what they mean. A good novel of any year can initiate us into our own new experience.” FeelsYearsMayMeanShowsFeelingsActionFacesFictionNovelBehaviorOur ActionsNew ExperiencesInitiate Book:On Writing Source: On Writing
“From the moment I start a new novel, life's just one endless torture. The first few chapters may go fairly well and I may feel there's still a chance to prove my worth, but that feeling soon disappears and every day I feel less and less satisfied.” FeelsFirstsWellsMayStillsMomentsFeelingsChanceNovelProveDisappearEndlessSatisfiedTortureJust OneChaptersDissatisfaction Author:Emile Zola
“It seems to me that life's circumstances, being ephemeral, teach us less about durable truths than the fictions based on those truths; and that the best lessons of delicacy and self-respect are to be found in novels where the feelings are so naturally portrayed that you fancy you are witnessing real life as you read.” RealSelfFeelingsSeemsFoundFictionTeachNovelCircumstancesLessonsReal LifeFancySelf RespectEphemeralDelicacy Author:Madame de Stael
“In the usual way I submitted manuscripts to publishers. This was not so much a feeling that I should be published as a wish to escape the feared and hated drudgery of "normal" work. In my twenties some of my work for children was published by Macmillan. However, I was twenty-seven before my adult novel, The Birthgrave, was taken by DAW Books in the USA. This enabled me finally to stop doing stupid and soul-killing jobs, and start working day and night as a professional writer. It felt like a rescue from damnation, and still does.” WayShouldChildrenDoeStillsBookSoulFeelingsJobsNightWishFeltNovelTakenStupidNormalAdultsTwentiesSevenKillingHatedUsaUsualRescuePublishersDay And NightManuscriptsDamnationDrudgery Author:Tanith Lee
“My own feeling is that the only possible reason for engaging in the hard labor of writing a novel, is that one is bothered by something one needs to understand, and can come to understand only through the characters in the imagined situation.” NeedsWritingHardReasonCharacterFeelingsMy OwnSituationNovelLaborEngagingBothered Book:Writings on Writing Source: Writings on Writing
“In How to Be an American Housewife Margaret Dilloway creates an irresistible heroine. Shoko is stubborn, contrary, proud, a wonderful housewife and full of deeply conflicted feelings. I wanted to shake her, even as I was cheering her on, and this cunningly structured novel allowed me to do both. It also took me on two intricate journeys, from post-war Japan and the shadow of Nagasaki to contemporary California, and from motherhood to daughterhood and back again. A profound and suspenseful debut.” TwoWarFeelingsWantedNovelWonderfulJourneyProudShadowProfoundMotherhoodContraryContemporaryPostsCaliforniaShakesJapanCheerStubbornIrresistibleHousewifeBack AgainHeroinesIntricateDebutPost War Author:Margot Livesey
“almost all American writers tend to overwrite, to tell too much. I get the disillusioned feeling that novels, today, are sold by the pound, like groceries. It actually takes a great deal more discipline to be able to leave out rather than to throw in everything. This means that you have to say in one sentence precisely what you mean, instead of saying sort of what you kind of mean in hundreds of sentences and hoping the sum total will add up.” KindMeanFeelingsTodayAbleDealsNovelToo MuchDisciplineAddSentencesPoundsGroceriesDisillusionedOne SentenceAmerican Writer Author:Rona Jaffe
“The kind of response I hope for when I write my novels for children: to give them a chance to recognize something of their own feelings -- about themselves, their parents, their friends -- and their own situation as a kind of subject race, always at the mercy of the adults who mostly run their lives for them.” GivingWritingKindChildrenFeelingsRunningParentChanceRaceSituationNovelSubjectsAdultsMercyResponse Author:Nina Bawden
“My books are based on emotions, feelings, relationships. In these areas women are experts, so it's not strange that the main characters of my novels are females.” BookCharacterFeelingsEmotionNovelStrangeAreasFemaleExpertsMain CharactersEmotions Feelings Author:Isabel Allende