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Novel Quotes

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Novel Quotes

“You want a novel to tap as directly as possible into your most unspeakable preoccupations. And in America, in particular, cricket is pretty unspeakable.”

Want America Novel Particular Cricket Preoccupation Unspeakable

Author:Joseph O'Neill

“I think the novel is the American form because people read it in private, and the only valuable things that happen in America happen in private life, because public life is a dead loss.”

People Thinking Happens America Form Life Is Loss Novel Valuable Private Life Public Life Valuable Things

Author:David Hare

“Look at Andrew Roe's The Miracle Girl from one angle and you'll see an incisive and insightful critique of America at the millennium and today, investigating where we put our faith and why. The greatest of Roe's achievements in this captivating debut is a memorable feat of intense empathy. Roe inhabits characters who are desperate to believe and reveals to us their needs and wounds and hopes, and he does so with kindness, generosity, and wisdom. This is a novel about what it means to be human, to seek connection and hope and maybe even transcendence in the world around us.”

“Fitzgerald could sense that America was poised on the edge of a vast transformation, and wrote a novel bridging his moment and ours. The Great Gatsby made manifest precisely what Fitzgerald’s contemporaries couldn’t bear to see, and thus it is not only the Jazz Age novel par excellence, but also the harbinger of its decline and fall.”

Made Moments Age America Fall Novel Bears Transformation Jazz Excellence Edges Manifest Decline Harbinger Jazz Age

Book:Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby

Source: Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby

“The truth is, everything we know about America, everything Americans come to know about being American, isn't from the news. I live there. We don't go home at the end of the day and think, "Well, I really know who I am now because the Wall Street Journal says that the Stock Exchange closed at this many points." What we know about how to be who we are comes from stories. It comes from the novels, the movies, the fashion magazines. It comes from popular culture.”

“We have a thriving subculture of 'independent' American movies that makes an impact on America as a whole roughly equivalent to that of a the modern literary novel. These are the films sincere viewers marry, whereas, once upon a time, movies were a lifetime of one night stands.”

Whole America Film Night Novel Modern Hollywood Independent Impact Lifetime Sincere Viewers One Night Once Upon A Time American Movie One Night Stand Subculture

Author:Edward Jay Epstein

“I haven't written a novel or something that long, because I really am improvising all along and the story is growing new limbs to do what it needs to do. So there's very little planning. There's a little planning where I say, "Well, it looks like I'm going in this direction, ok, good." But there's very little forethought or intellectual justification: "Oh, look, I'm putting in a theme park because that represents dystopian America!"”

Needs Wells Looks Littles Long Stories America Novel Growing Written Havens Intellectual Planning Parks Theme Justification Dystopian Limbs Improvising Forethought Theme Parks

Author:George Saunders

“Jayne Anne Phillips . . . is at the height of her powers in Lark and Termite. . . . This is a major novel from one of America's finest writers.”

America Novel Majors Height Finest Larks

Author:Robert Olen Butler

“In America they have to know just what you are-- novelist, poet, playwright... Well, I've been all of them... I think poems and novels and stories spring from the same seed. It's not like, say, playing polo and knitting.”

Thinking Knows Wells Stories America Novel Poet Spring Seeds Novelists Playwright Knitting Polo

Author:Robert Penn Warren

“How are we to write The Russian novel in America As long as life goes so unterribly?”

Writing Long America United States Novel

Book:Selected poems

Source: Selected poems

“Mr. Robinson and Mr. Kovite have...written a captivating coming-of-age novel that is, by turns, funny and sad and elegiac -\-\ a novel that leaves us with some revealing snapshots of America, both at war and in denial, and some telling portraits of a couple of millennials trying to grope their way toward adulthood.”

Way Trying War Age America Turns Novel Written Couple Denial Coming Of Age Adulthood Portraits Revealing Millennials Snapshots Captivating

Author:Michiko Kakutani

“There's no lack of writers writing novels in America, about America. Therefore, it seems to me it would be wasteful for me to add to that huge number of people writing here when there are so few people writing about somewhere else.”

People Writing Seems Would Be America Numbers Novel Huge Add Somewhere Else Huge Numbers

Author:Chinua Achebe

“Radio is the medium that most closely approximates the experience of reading. As a novelist, I find it very exciting to be able to reach people who might not ever pick up one of my books, either because they can't afford it (as is often the case in Latin America), or because they just don't have the habit of reading novels.”

People Book Might Able America Reading Cases Novel Habit Picks Exciting Radio Mediums Novelists Latin Latin America Reading Novels

Author:Daniel Alarcon

“As a matter of fact, I constantly tell audiences all over the world that the single greatest icon of American culture from the publication of "To Kill A Mockingbird" was that novel so that if we say, what conversation can we have that would lead us on a road of tolerance, and teachers have decided that if you're going to teach values in a school in America, the answer that American teachers at all kinds of schools have come up with, just let Harper Lee teach "To Kill A Mockingbird." And then all the teacher has to do is stand back and guide the discussion.”

“It's really the story of a young woman, or two women, growing up in Naples in a poor neighborhood. The way that they get out of it - or don't get out of it - that's part of it. But it's also the story of the mid-20th century in Italy so it's really like a social, historical and personal novel. I think that even though I didn't live in Italy in those years, it did cover that same type of generational upbringing that someone like me might've had in America.”

“Yes, there's a relaying of internal states that only a novel can achieve. In my view, the novel is one of Europe's greatest gifts to the world. America and Africa collaborated to give the world jazz. We'll call it even.”

World Giving States America Views Novel Achieve Europe Jazz Internals Greatest Gifts

Author:Teju Cole