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Novel Quotes

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Novel Quotes

“In the time it takes American literary titan William H. Gass to write a novel, other artists have been born, completed their life's work and died. That may be an exaggeration, but only a slight one.”

Writing May Has Beens Artist Born Novel Died Exaggeration Titans

Author:Tony D'Souza

“I was born into the century in which novels lost their stories, poems their rhymes, paintings their form, and music its beauty, but that does not mean I have to like that trend or go along with it.”

Mean Doe Stories Form Lost Born Novel Century Fashion Painting Trends Rhyme

Author:Pat Conroy

“And this is the way a novel gets written, in ignorance, fear, sorrow, madness, and a kind of psychotic happiness as an incubator for the wonders being born.”

Way Kind Joy Born Wonder Novel Written Ignorance Sorrow Madness Psychotic

Book:Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac, 1947-1954

Source: Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac, 1947-1954

“When you saw the movie "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," that was Michael [Jackson]'s story write large. Born as an elderly person, Benjamin Button was, in the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel and in the film starring Brad Pitt, he dies as a newborn child. Michael Jackson's childhood was one of enormous, prodigious production.He was a child prodigy, he was a wunderkind.”

“a novel is not born of a single idea. The stories I've tried to write from one idea, no matter how terrific an idea, have sputtered out and died by chapter three. For me, novels have invariably come from a complex of ideas that in the beginning seemed to bear no relation to each other, but in the unconscious began mysteriously to merge and grow. Ideas for a novel are like the strong guy lines of a spider web. Without them the silken web cannot be spun.”

Writing Ideas Matter Stories Guy Three Strong Grows Born Lines Novel Bears Relation Died Complexes Unconscious Chapters Spiders Terrific Spun Spider Web

Author:Katherine Paterson

“Many years from now when your children ask what New York City was like just after 9/11, this will be the book you give them in response. It's an exquisite novel full of heart, soul, passion and intelligence, and it's the one this great New York author was born to write.”

Giving Writing Years Heart Children Book Soul Passion Asks Born Cities Novel New York Our Children Response Your Children New York City Exquisite

Author:Lee Child

“Imitation both unconscious and conscious is par excellence the educational method of the family. It is plain that a considerable part of the adaptation of living beings to their environment, i.e., of beings that are born plastic, is passed on from generation to generation through imitation. Were this not so, much if not all of the road traversed by one generation would have to be travelled by the next generation from the very beginning and without short-cuts. Consequently there would be little chance for the novel adaptation, the propitious individual variation, that constitutes progress.”

“I got a rejection letter from an editor at HarperCollins, who included a report from his professional reader. This report shredded my first-born novel, laughed at my phrasing, twirled my lacy pretensions around and gobbed into the seething mosh pit of my stolen clichés. As I read the report, the world became very quiet and stopped rotating. What poisoned me was the fact that the report's criticisms were all absolutely true. The sound of my landlady digging in the garden got the world moving again. I slipped the letter into the trash... knowing I'd remember every word.”

“I was born January 6, 1937, eight years after Wall Street crashed and two years before John Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath, his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the plight of a family during the Great Depression.”

Years Two Winning Born Novel Streets Wall Eight Prize Two Years Wrath Grapes January Great Depression Plight Prize Winning

Book:Wins, Losses, and Lessons: An Autobiography

Source: Wins, Losses, and Lessons: An Autobiography

“The most powerful words in English are 'Tell me a story,' words that are intimately related to the complexity of history, the origins of language, the continuity of the species, the taproot of our humanity, our singularity, and art itself. I was born into the century in which novels lost their stories, poems their rhymes, paintings their form, and music its beauty, but that does not mean I had to like that trend or go along with it. I fight against these movements with every book I write.”

“Almost any tale of our doings is comic. We are bottomlessly comic to each other. Even the most adored and beloved person is comic to his lover. The novel is a comic form. Language is a comic form, and makes jokes in its sleep. God, if He existed, would laugh at His creation. Yet it is also the case that life is horrible, without metaphysical sense, wrecked by chance, pain and the close prospect of death. Out of this is born irony, our dangerous and necessary tool.”

Ifs Persons Pain Form Life Is Language Born Chance Sleep Cases Novel Laughing Dangerous Creation Lovers Jokes Tools Horrible Tales Comic Irony Beloved Metaphysical Doings Beloved Person

Book:The Black Prince

Source: The Black Prince

“A man who is not born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time of it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He has no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story. He merely has some people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality, and he trusts he can plunge those people into those incidents with interesting results.”

Source: The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays

“When I was pregnant, I had the romantic idea that after the baby was born I would not only take up reading in earnest again, but also write a novel while my daughter slept in her Moses basket. Of course, I barely had time to keep up with my magazines until she started sleeping properly.”

Writing Ideas Courses Reading Born Sleep Novel Baby Daughter Magazines My Daughter Pregnant Earnest Moses Baskets Were Pregnant

Author:Kate Beckinsale

“I was born in the era of the novel. I've written many, as well as collections of poetry, and essays for mouthing off. I've written to inches, word-counts, page-counts, even the sonnet and the screenplay (which I call a plot poem). I write narrative. That's it. I just want to tell it.”

Want Writing Wells Born Novel Written Pages Eras Narrative Collections Plot Inches Essays Sonnet Screenplays

Author:Julianna Baggott

“Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (whose mother died ten days after she was born) wrote a novel that anticipates Semmelweis's discovery and serves as a parable for the destructive power of decaying matter.”

Matter Mother Born Novel Ten Discovery Died Destructive Mary Anticipate Parables Mother Died Shelley Destructive Power

Author:Laura Mullen

“A novel is a way to rethink and rewrite and re-envision the past, and also a way to speak to people who haven't been born yet about what we think about right now.”

People Thinking Way Past Speak Born Novel Havens Right Now

Author:Emily Barton