“Novel-writing is a bit like deception. You lie as little as you possibly can. That's the way I do it, anyway.” WayWritingLittlesLyingBitsNovelDeceptionNovel Writing Author:Joseph O'Neill
“At the risk, then, of being shunned by some of my gloomier peers, I venture to tell you that writers work like demons, suffer greatly, and are also happy, in unmistakable ways, some of the time. If we had no knowledge of happiness, our novels wouldn't sufficiently resemble real life. Some of us are even made a little bit happy, on occasion, by the writing process itself. I mean, really, if there wasn't some sort of enjoyment to be derived, would any of us keep doing it?” IfsWayWritingMeanLittlesMadeRealSufferingBitsProcessNovelRiskLittle BitReal LifeOccasionsEnjoymentDemonPeersVentureWriting Process Author:Michael Cunningham
“The result of a public that has a very high consumption rate and turnover rate is people listen to more music but spend less time with individual bits of music. It's made me more likely to put things up quickly and treat it more like a magazine instead of a novel.” PeopleMadeIndividualBitsResultsNovelTreatsRateMagazinesConsumptionTurnover Author:Trent Reznor
“Well, when I was a young writer the people we read were Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sartre, Camus, Celine, Malraux. And to begin with, I was a bit of a copycat writer and very derivative and tried to write a novel using their voices, really.... I keep it out of print.” PeopleWritingWellsYoungBitsVoiceNovelPrintDerivativesYoung WritersCopycatsCeline Author:Mordecai Richler
“Fiction -- at least for me -- requires long, relatively uninterrupted time stretches in which to bring it to fruition. I've never been a two-hour-in-the-morning writer, who could put in another six hours on Sunday afternoon. For me, a novel requires weeks of living in a largely mental and wholly internal landscape. Everything else has to be relegated to the odd hour here, the bit of time there. Sadly, however, uninterrupted time blocks are not what life doles out today to any of us with regularity.” LongTwoTodayBitsHoursFictionMorningNovelWeekSixBlockLandscapeOddInternalsSundayAfternoonRegularityFruitionSunday Afternoons Book:Conversations with Samuel R. Delany Source: Conversations with Samuel R. Delany
“I think that physics is about escaping the prison of the received thoughts and searching for novel ways of thinking the world, about trying to clear a bit the misty lake of insubstantial dreams, which reflect reality like the lake reflects the mountains.” ThinkingWorldWayTryingDreamRealityBitsNovelClearMountainPrisonPhysicsLakesWay Of ThinkingEscapingMisty Book:Quantum Gravity Source: Quantum Gravity
“The novel is about five students of classics who are studying with a classics professor, and they take the ideas of the things that they're learning from him a bit too seriously, with terrible consequences.” IdeasLiteratureBitsNovelStudyFiveStudentsTerribleConsequenceProfessors Author:Donna Tartt
“The only difficulty is to know what bits to choose and what to leave out. Novel-writing is not creation, it is selection.” KnowsWritingBitsNovelCreationDifficultySelectionNovel Writing Book:Letters to a Friend Source: Letters to a Friend
“I've never seen novels as built things. I have a tendency to see them as found things so that I always feel a little bit like an archaeologist who's working to get some fragile fossil out of the ground. And the more you get out unbroken, the better you succeed.” FeelsLittlesFoundBitsNovelSucceedLittle BitBuiltTendenciesFragileFossilsUnbrokenArchaeologists Author:Stephen King
“So, in some ways, the political songs tend to be a bit more like reportage, whereas the love songs tend to be like novels, you can pick them up off the shelf and go into them any time.” WayPoliticalSongBitsNovelPicksShelves Author:Billy Bragg
“At a very early stage of the novel's development I get this urge to collect bits of straw and fluff, and to eat pebbles. Nobody will ever discover how clearly a bird visualizes, or if it visualizes at all, the future nest and the eggs in it.” IfsBitsNovelStageDevelopmentBirdUrgesEggsNestsStrawsPebblesFluff Book:Strong opinions Source: Strong opinions
“I do not begin my novel at the beginning, I do not reach chapter three before I reach chapter four, I do not go dutifully from one page to the next, in consecutive order; no, I pick out a bit here and a bit there, till I have filled all the gaps on paper. This is why I like writing my stories and novels on index cards, numbering them later when the whole set is complete. Every card is rewritten many times.” WritingWholeStoriesOrderThreeNextBitsNovelFourPaperPagesPicksFilledCardsGapsChaptersConsecutive Author:Vladimir Nabokov
“I couldn't decide on a title for my first novel and my editor came up with Everything Good Will Come. After that, I thought I should name my own books.A Bit of Difference seems just right.” ShouldFirstsBookSeemsNamesBitsDifferencesMy OwnNovelTitlesEditorsGood Will Author:Sefi Atta
“For me a paragraph in a novel is a bit like a line in a poem. It has its own shape, its own music, its own integrity.” BitsLinesNovelIntegrityShapesParagraph Author:Paul Auster
“I do think a good story in a novel is fair game and there's nothing wrong with adapting that. It sometimes gets a bit facile where they think: "Let's get the next best-seller and see if we can turn it into a film."” IfsThinkingSometimesStoriesFilmTurnsNextGamesBitsNovelFairsGood StorySellersAdaptingBest SellersFair Game Author:Colin Firth
“I do hang out with girls, I do relax. But I am a hermit sometimes and get a bit too introverted, too 'Jean-Paul Sartre' and intellectual in my head. And it's like a Kafka novel in there, things get nuts. Then I have to remind myself to get out and I will go and play ice hockey with my friends.” SometimesPlayGirlBitsNovelIntellectualMy FriendsIceRelaxHanging OutHockeyNutsHermitsIce HockeyIntrovertedPaul Sartre Author:Josh Peck
“When I'm writing novels, even screenplays, it's never an actor I have in mind; it's always the version in my head of who the character is. Once somebody gets cast, I have to adjust a little bit to who they are.” WritingMindLittlesCharacterActorsBitsNovelLittle BitCastsVersionsScreenplays Author:Jonathan Tropper
“I think there's a real connection between acting and writing novels because the way I write characters has a little bit to do with the method acting that I was taught in high school and college.” ThinkingWayWritingLittlesRealCharacterSchoolBitsActingNovelTaughtCollegeLittle BitHigh SchoolConnectionsMethodMethod ActingReal Connection Author:Jeffrey Eugenides
“As much as I revere great writing, and am still humbled by it, literary activities are no longer esoteric to me. When I read a great novel - something that I could never have written myself - I'm still looking at it a little bit like a technician.” WritingLittlesStillsBitsNovelWrittenActivityLittle BitEsotericGreat WritingTechniciansGreat Novels Author:Jonathan Lethem
“I have only one bit of advice to beginning writers: be sure your novel is read by Rodgers and Hammerstein.” BitsNovelAdviceBeginning Writers Author:James A. Michener
“[A novel by Henry James] is like a church lit but without a congregation to distract you, with every light and line focused on the high altar. And on the altar, very reverently place, intensely there, is a dead kitten, an egg-shell, a bit of string.” LightBitsChurchLinesNovelFocusedEggsStringsShellsLitAltarsKittenCongregation Author:H. G. Wells
“I need as much of the business of making a film to be in my own workspace. It really ought to be a bit more like doing a novel, alone, at first. I'm feeling my way.” WayNeedsFirstsFeelingsFilmBitsMy OwnNovelOughtMy WayWorkspace Author:William Monahan
“While I was drawn to the Renaissance, my first (unpublished) novels took place in modern times. When the subject of alchemy started creeping into my stories, an astute mentor observed that the bits about alchemy might fit better in another time frame. When I finally decided to weave the pieces about the medieval science into historical settings, a successful novel began to emerge. (And I dusted off that art history book, and put it to use once again.)” FirstsArtBookStoriesUseMightBitsNovelSuccessfulPiecesModernSubjectsFitDecidedHistoricalSettingSettingsMentorMedievalRenaissanceAlchemyArt HistoryHistory BooksModern TimesAnother TimeAstute Author:Mary Pope Osborne
“Wrote my first "novel" when I was six. Studied a bit in college, but then pursued history... But when I started writing professionally, it was mostly learn as you go.” WritingFirstsBitsNovelCollegeSixPursued Author:David B. Coe