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Novel Writing Quotes

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Novel Writing Quotes

“No tricks, no tools, but talent makes a task truly top class.”

“Arrogant men with knowledge make more noise from their mouth than making a sense from their mind.”

“Prudence is precaution, prudence is protection.”

“When wealth goes only happiness goes, when health goes even the hope goes.”

“Principles in a poor is admirable as politeness in a prince.”

“Before we complicated life with money, machines and missiles we did well with morals, manpower and meetings.”

“With right fashion, every female would be a flame.”

“Fashion doesn't make you perfect, but it makes you pretty.”

“Dresses don't look beautiful on hangers.”

“Dresses won't worn out in the wardrobe, but that is not what dresses are designed for.”

“In modern times couples are more concerned about loyalty than love.”

“I still remember typing the title page on my manual Smith-Corona with clammy hands and a racing heart. When I came to the words, "A novel by Joyce Elbert", I heard the New York Philharmonic break into Wagnerian praise for a major new literary voice, yet seconds later doubt and insecurity had crept in.”

“Las dos categorías mentales básicas son el espacio y el tiempo. El espacio es la categoría feliz: uno vive, camina, respira, ama, come en el espacio; el tiempo, en cambio, es la categoría triste porque es donde envejecemos, morimos. Y creo que hay una literatura -la vieja novela, por ejemplo- que creaba esos grandes escenarios donde uno se podía evadir. Ahora ha sido reemplazada por una literatura del tiempo, más triste. Todo es autoficción, que es contar vidas...”

“Novel-writing has in one respect an affinity to the drama—that time and distance are required to soften for use the harsher features that may be exhibited from real life; that it was almost impossible to bring forward events without touching on their causes; and that any tendency to political discussion, however liberal or applicable, was not to be tolerated in a sort of work which people took up with no other design than to be amused at the least possible expence of thought.”

“The novel is whatever novelists are doing at a given time. If we‘re not doing the big social novel fifteen years from now, it‘ll probably mean our sensibilities have changed in ways that make such work less compelling to us — we won‘t stop because the market dried up. The writer leads, he doesn‘t follow. The dynamic lives in the writer‘s mind, not in the size of the audience. And if the social novel lives, but only barely, surviving in the cracks and ruts of the culture, maybe it will be taken more seriously, as an endangered spectacle. A reduced context but a more intense one [...] PS [...] If serious reading dwindles to near nothingness, it will probably mean that the thing we‘re talking about when we use the word ‘identity‘ has reached an end. – Don Delillo, in a letter to Jonathan Franzen”

“Music is the fastest motivator in the world.”

“You can not control the thought, but you can control the tongue.”

“Let someone else be the most powerful country, make ours the most peaceful country.”

“When you were making excuses someone else was making enterprise.”

“Faster is fatal, slower is safe.”

“One who doesn't recognise an opportunity is bigger loser than one who tries his hand at an opportunity.”

“In any game, the game itself is the prize, no matter who wins, ultimately both lose the game.”

“If she says goodbye, someone else will say hi.”

“Civilians enjoy their time because soldiers sacrifice their time.”

“Cowards say it can't be done, critics say it shouldn't have been done, creator say well done.”

“If your prudence stops you every time from taking an action, then you are no more prudent, you are frightened.”

“An assembly is extra slow in taking actions.”

“Action achieves ambition.”

“Most of the people readily accept the principle but resist its practice.”

“Fear of failure is fiction, face this fact and fear will fall.”

“Throughout my career I’ve lived in constant fear that I wouldn’t be good enough, that I’d have nothing to say, that I’d be laughed at, humiliated—and I’m old enough to know that fear will follow me to the very last word I’ll ever write. As for now, I feel the first itch of the novel I’m supposed to write—the grain of sand that irritates the soft tissues of the oyster. The beginning of the world as I don’t quite know it. But I trust I’ll begin to know it soon.”

“With discipline, you can lose weight, you can excel in work, you can win the war.”

“Creativity without discipline will struggle, creativity with discipline will succeed.”

“Fail soon so that you can succeed sooner.”

“Today it is cheaper to start a business than tomorrow.”

“He had entered another imaginative world, one connected to the beginning of his life as a writer, to the Napoleonic world that had been a lifelong metaphor for the power of art, for the empire of his own creation He began to dictate notes for a new novel, "fragments of the book he imagines himself to be writing." As if he were now writing a novel of which his own altered consciousness was the dramatic center, he dictated a vision of himself as Napoleon and his own family as the Imperial Bonapartes....William and Alice he grasped with his regent hand, addressing his 'dear and most esteemed brother and sister.' To them, to whom he had granted countries, he now gave the responsibility of supervising the detailed plans he had created for 'the decoration of certain apartments, here of the Louvre and Tuileries, which you will find addressed in detail to artists and workment who take them in hand.' He was himself the 'imperial eagle.' Taking down the dictation, Theodora [his secretary] felt it to be almost more than she could bear. 'It is a heart-breaking thing to do, though, there is the extraordinary fact that his mind does retain the power to frame perfectly characteristic sentences.”

“You've told a good story in a skillful manner. I like it that you haven't moralized about your heroine's mistakes. You've made it difficult for the reader not to sympathize with her." "I sympathize with her," Amanda said frankly. "I've always thought it would be the worst kind of horror to be trapped in a loveless marriage. So many women are forced to marry because of pure economics. If more women were able to support themselves, there would be fewer reluctant brides and unhappy wives." "Why, Miss Briars," he said softly. "How unconventional of you." She countered his amusement with a perplexed frown. "It's only sensible, really." He realized suddenly that this was the key to understanding her. Amanda was so doggedly practical that she was willing to discard the hypocrisies and stale social attitudes that most people accepted without thinking. Why, indeed, should a woman marry just because it was the expected thing to do, if she were able to choose otherwise? "Perhaps most women think it is easier to marry than support themselves," he said, deliberately provoking her. "Easier?" she snorted. "I've never seen a shred of evidence that spending the rest of one's days in domestic drudgery is any easier than working at some trade. What women need is more education, more choices, and then they will be able to consider options for themselves other than marriage.”

“During your struggle society is not a bunch of flowers, it is a bunch of cactus.”

“Power does not pardon, power punishes.”