Best novel & action Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“I'm not sure that it's possible to write a novel about people who don't transgress or stumble, people who don't surprise themselves with the things they do, people who can explain all their actions with perfect logical consistency. At least it's not possible for me to write that sort of novel.”

People Writing Action Perfect Novel Surprise Not Sure Logical Consistency

Author:Tom Perrotta

“I'm used to adapting my novels for feature film - it can be challenging to cut and compress three or four hundred pages into two hours of dramatic action.”

Two Action Film Used Three Hours Challenges Novel Four Cutting Pages Hundred Features Dramatic Adapting

Author:Tom Perrotta

“Maybe I would have become an actor. I was a very outgoing kid, but being in the hospital - being outside of social action for so long - turned me into an observer. Actually, right after I got out of the hospital, I did start writing a novel, but the book was so transparently about me that I stopped.”

Writing Long Book Kids Action Actors Social Novel Hospitals Observers Outgoing Social Action

Author:Brent Runyon

“I think you will agree that I am alive in every part of this book; turn back twenty, thirty, one hundred pages - I am back there. That is why I hate the story; characters are not snakes that they must shed their skins on every page - there can only be one action: what a man is. When you have understood this, you will be through with novels.”

Thinking Men Writing Book Character Stories Action Hate Turns Novel Alive Pages Understood Hundred Skins I Hate Twenties Agree Thirty Shed Snakes I Am Alive

Author:Kenneth Patchen

“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.”

Feels Years May Mean Shows Feelings Action Faces Fiction Novel Behavior Our Actions New Experiences Initiate

Book:On Writing

Source: On Writing

“A magical blending of mystery, romance, and deep and dangerous secrets. Kelly Parra’s Invisible Touch is an action-packed coming-of-age novel, sure to keep readers turning pages and begging for a sequel.”

Age Action Romance Secret Novel Mystery Dangerous Reader Pages Invisible Coming Of Age Begging Sequels

Author:Laurie Faria Stolarz

“I have discovered a universal rule which seems to apply more than any other in all human actions or words: namely, to steer away from affectation at all costs, as if it were a rough and dangerous reef, and (to use perhaps a novel word for it) to practise in all things a certain nonchalance [sprezzatura] which conceals all artistry and makes whatever one says or does seem uncontrived and effortless.”

Ifs Humans Doe Use Seems Action Certain Novel Dangerous Cost All Things Universal Rough Steers Artistry Effortless Practise Reefs Human Actions Nonchalance

Author:Baldassare Castiglione

“The "Lucifer Effect" describes the point in time when an ordinary, normal person first crosses the boundary between good and evil to engage in an evil action. It represents a transformation of human character that is significant in its consequences. Such transformations are more likely to occur in novel settings, in "total situations," where social situational forces are sufficiently powerful to overwhelm, or set aside temporally, personal attributes of morality, compassion, or sense of justice and fair play.”

“THE ABULON DANCE is an intricate and fast-paced novel of political intrigue and clashing alien cultures. The characterizations are rich, detailed, and subtle, the action engrossing. I finished it in a single sitting.”

Action Political Culture Novel Rich Sitting Finished Aliens Subtle Intrigue Fast Paced Intricate Characterization

Author:Robin Wayne Bailey

“It is curious for one who studies the action and reaction of national literature on each other, to see the humor of Swift and Sterne and Fielding, after filtering through Richter, reappear in Carlyle with a tinge of Germanism that makes it novel, alien, or even displeasing, as the case may be, to the English mind.”

Mind May Action Literature Cases Novel Study Style Reactions Curious Aliens Action And Reaction

Book:Literary essays; Among my books, My study windows, Fireside travels

Source: Literary essays; Among my books, My study windows, Fireside travels

“Roughly, the action of a character should be unpredictable before it has been shown, inevitable when it has been shown. In the first half of a novel, the unpredictability should be the more striking. In the second half, the inevitability should be the more striking.”

Should Firsts Has Beens Character Action Half Novel Inevitable Unpredictable Inevitability Unpredictability

Book:Collected Impressions

Source: Collected Impressions

“A novel must show how the world truly is. Somehow, reveals the true source of our actions.”

World Shows Action Novel Source Our Actions

Author:Jane Austen

“I abhor crime novels in which the main character can behave however he or she pleases, or do things that normal people do not do, without those actions having social consequences.”

People Character Action Social Novel Crime Please Normal Consequence Behave Main Characters Crime Novels

Author:Steig Larsson

“I define a thriller as a big-stakes, multiple-viewpoint novel involving suspense, action, and mystery, in which the reader doesn't know everything but usually knows more than any single character.”

Knows Character Bigs Action Novel Mystery Reader Suspense Stakes Multiple Involving Thrillers Viewpoints

Author:F. Paul Wilson

“Through their capacity to manipulate symbols and to engage in reflective thought, people can generate novel ideas and innovative actions that transcend their past experiences”

People Ideas Action Past Novel Capacity Symbols Manipulate Innovative Past Experiences Self Efficacy

Author:Albert Bandura

“But I'm not a small-literary-novel kind of guy, and once I'd developed the world in the first couple of hundred pages, I felt that there was potential here to go on and write an engaging story set in that world. So that's what I did. This probably ruins things both for the people who want small literary novels and for those who want action-packed epics, but anyway, it's what I wrote.”

People World Want Writing Firsts Kind Stories Action Guy Felt Novel Goes On Couple Pages Hundred Ruins Epic Engaging

Author:Neal Stephenson

“I think the success of every novel - if it's a novel of action - depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, 'Which are my big scenes?' and then get every drop of juice out of them. The principle I always go on in writing a novel is to think of the characters in terms of actors in a play. I say to myself, if a big name were playing this part, and if he found that after a strong first act he had practically nothing to do in the second act, he would walk out. Now, then, can I twist the story so as to give him plenty to do all the way through?”

Ifs Thinking Way Giving Writing Firsts Play Character Stories Bigs Action Actors Found Names Strong Term Walks Principles Novel Goes On Depends Scene Spots Plenty Things To Do Twists Juice

Author:P. G. Wodehouse

“Novels are completed when they are finished, but the memoir changes its own conclusion by virtue of being written... I was not at all the same person, when I handed the manuscript to the publisher, as I had been when I began. A memoir may always be retrospective, but the past is not where its action takes place.”

May Persons Action Past Novel Virtue Written Finished Memoir Conclusion Publishers Manuscripts Retrospective

Author:Nuala O'Faolain

“In most novels, the landscape, or the place, in which the story takes part is simply a backdrop to the human action.”

Humans Stories Action Novel Landscape Human Actions Backdrop

Author:Paul Kingsnorth

“The action of the child inventing a new game with his playmates; Einstein formulating a theory of relativity; the housewife devising a new sauce for the meat, a young author writing his first novel; all of these are in terms of definition, Creative, and there is no attempt to set them in some order of more or less Creative.”

Source: On becoming a person: a therapist's view of psychotherapy

“I saved letters from my boss. There are things in there that are directly transcribed. I was so glad I did that. Sometimes when I was writing the book I wondered if some little writer hobbit part of my brain was back there puppeteering that action. But it really never, on any conscious level, occurred to me that I would write about it. I will say, I thought probably some day there would be an ancillary character in some novel - not in the one I was currently writing - that would be a dominatrix or something.”

Ifs Writing Littles Book Sometimes Character Would Be Action Levels Brain Novel Conscious Letters Saved Glad Boss

Author:Melissa Febos

“"Freedom, individualism, authenticity and being yourself so long as you don't hurt another's physical person or property: The creative process is the emergence in action of a novel relational product, growing out of the uniqueness of the individual."”

Persons Long Art Action Individual Process Hurt Novel Creative Growing Products Property Authenticity Being Yourself Individualism Creative Process Uniqueness Emergence

Author:Carl Rogers

“Characters in Hollywood movies encounter a lot of car chases. Characters in novels rarely wash their hands or do their laundry. And in the work of moral psychologists, people deliberate and reflect a lot. They deliberate, one sometimes feels, whenever they perform an action, and certainly whenever they act for good reasons.”

People Sometimes Reason Character Action Moral Novel Psychology Car Ethics Psychologist Laundry

Book:Unprincipled Virtue: An Inquiry Into Moral Agency

Source: Unprincipled Virtue: An Inquiry Into Moral Agency

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