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Novel Quotes

“Today the crime novelist has one advantage denied to writers of 'straight' or 'literary' novels. Unlike them he can range over all levels of society, for crime can easily breach the barriers that exist in our stratified society. Because of these barriers the modern literary novel, unlike its 19th-century predecessors, is often confined to the horizontal, dealing only with one class. But crime runs through society from top to bottom, and so the crime novelist can present a fuller picture of the way we live now.”

Source: Life & Letters: The Spectator Columns

“But are they all horrid, are you sure they are all horrid? [Referring to Gothic novels, fashionable in England at the beginning of the 19th century, but frowned upon in polite society.]”

Novel Century England Polite Gothic Fashionable 19th Century Referring

Author:Jane Austen

“The Anglo-American tradition is much more linear than the European tradition. If you think about writers like Borges, Calvino, Perec or Marquez, they're not bound in the same sort of way. They don't come out of the classic 19th-century novel, which is where all the problems start. 19th-century novels are fabulous and we should all read them, but we shouldn't write them.”

Ifs Thinking Way Should Writing Problem Novel Century Tradition Bounds Classic Fabulous 19th Century Linear Borges American Tradition Marquez

Author:Jeanette Winterson

“Well into the 19th century there were pronouncements from just about every branch of science and medicine that reading, writing, and thinking were dangerous for women. Articles in the Lancet declared that women's brains would burst and their uteruses atrophy if they engaged in any form of rigorous thinking. The famous physician J.D. Kellogg insisted that novel reading was the greatest cause of uterine disease among young women and urged parents to protect their daughters from the dreaded consequences of print.”

“My view of an excellent novel was probably set in the golden age of fiction in the 19th century: narrative, character and voice are of equal importance.”

Character Age Voice Views Fiction Novel Century Equal Importance Golden Narrative Excellent 19th Century Golden Age

Author:Joanna Trollope

“I found myself wondering, what would it be like to have a strange woman living in your home, nursing your child? My resulting research into the private lives of women in the 18th and 19th centuries inspired me and provided the backbone for [Lady of Milkweed Manor] novel.”

Children Home Found Wonder Novel Century Strange Research Our Children Inspired Your Children Private Life Nursing 19th Century Backbone Milkweed

Author:Julie Klassen

“Many great authors of the 19th century wrote under conditions of strict censorship. The great thing about the art of writing a novel, is that you can write about anything. All you have to say is that it's fiction.”

Writing Art Fiction Novel Conditions Century Great Things Censorship Strict 19th Century Art Of Writing Great Author

Author:Orhan Pamuk

“I've always been a fan of the 19th century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major minor character, the passage of time and its effect on the characters in the story.”

Character Stories Novel Fans Effects Century Majors Driven Passages Minors 19th Century Passage Of Time Minor Characters

Author:John Irving

“I think poets are supposed to be writing for television and film. I grew up in the day of early TV that was so raw and funny, and I think we're in the next important moment of television, where it's really telling the epic of the culture like Charles Dickens was doing in the 19th century with his serialized novels.”

Thinking Writing Important Moments Film Culture Next Novel Century Television Poet Tvs Grew Grew Up Supposed To Be Epic 19th Century Dickens Important Moments

Author:Eileen Myles

“I was in school for literature, and read so many 19th century and early 20th century novels that it was hard to break out of that and read an average Jeanette Winterson book or something.”

Book Hard School Literature Break Novel Century Average 20th Century 19th Century Break Out

Author:Colin Meloy

“I'm a very old-fashioned novelist. I write 19th-century novels, where a lot of rules apply.”

Writing Novel Century Novelists Old Fashioned 19th Century

Author:John Irving