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Novel Quotes

“I read Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which I think will subsequently be recognized as one of the first great novels of the 21st century.”

Thinking Firsts Novel Century Strange 21st Century Great Novels

Author:Lev Grossman

“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

“But the novels of women were not affected only by the necessarily narrow range of the writer's experience. They showed, at least in the nineteenth century, another characteristic which may be traced to the writer's sex. In Middlemarch and in Jane Eyre we are conscious not merely of the writer's character, as we are conscious of the character of Charles Dickens, but we are conscious of a woman's presence of someone resenting the treatment of her sex and pleading for its rights.”

May Character Sex Novel Rights Century Conscious Range Characteristics Treatment Affected Jane Nineteenth Century Dickens Pleading Middlemarch

Book:Selected essays

Source: Selected essays

“Barchester Towers has become one of those novels which do not die quite at once, which live and are read for perhaps a quarter of a century.”

Dies Novel Century Quarters Towers Quarter Of A Century

Book:Anthony Trollope: The Chronicles of Barsetshire & The Palliser Novels (Unabridged): The Warden + The Barchester Towers + Doctor Thorne + Framley Parsonage + The Small House at Allington + The Last Chronicle of Barset + Can You Forgive Her? + The Prime Minister + Eustace Diamonds...

Source: Anthony Trollope: The Chronicles of Barsetshire & The Palliser Novels (Unabridged): The Warden + The Barchester Towers + Doctor Thorne + Framley Parsonage + The Small House at Allington + The Last Chronicle of Barset + Can You Forgive Her? + The Prime Minister + Eustace Diamonds...

“The real origin of science fiction lay in the seventeeth-century novels of exploration in fabulous lands. Therefore Jules Verne's story of travel to the moon is not science fiction because they go by rocket but because of where they go. It would be as much science fiction if they went by rubber band.”

Ifs Real Stories Would Be Fiction Novel Land Century Moon Band Science Fiction Lays Exploration Fabulous Rockets Rubber Rubber Bands

Author:Philip K. Dick

“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'd studied 16th century science and magic. I thought it was strange that people were interested in the same kinds of things my research was about. The more I thought about it, the more intriguing it became and pretty soon I was writing a novel about a reluctant witch and a 1500-year-old vampire.”

People Writing Years Kind Novel Magic Century Strange Research Vampire Witch Reluctant Intriguing

Author:Deborah Harkness

“Season of Migration to the North, by Tayeb Salih, is an eloquent and restrained portrait of one man's exile. It is a rare narrative in that it charts a life divided between England and Sudan. Without a doubt it is one of the finest Arabic novels of the 20th century, and Denys Johnson-Davies' translationdoes the original justice.”

Men Justice Novel Doubt Century Seasons England Originals Narrative One Man Divided Finest Portraits 20th Century Exile Johnson Eloquent Migration Sudan

Author:Hisham Matar

“The phrase the violent bear it away fascinated the 20th century Irish-American storyteller Flannery O'Connor, who used it as the title of one of her novels. O'Connor's surname connects her to an Irish royal family descended from Conchobor (pronounced Connor), the prehistoric king of Ulster who was foster father to Cuchulainn and husband of the unwilling Derdriu. In the western world, the antiquity of Irish lineages is exceeded only by that of the Jews.”

Source: How The Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe

“It was the ponderous battering ram of his novels that opened the way through the genteel reticences of American nineteenth-century fiction. . . Without [Theodore] Dreiser's treading out a path for naturalism none of us would have had a chance to publish.”

Way Chance Fiction Novel Path Century Publish Nineteenth Century Naturalism Rams Treading Theodore Reticence Battering

Book:The Best Times: An Informal Memoir

Source: The Best Times: An Informal Memoir

“F.R. Leavis's "eat up your broccoli" approach to fiction emphasises this junkfood/wholefood dichotomy. If reading a novel--for theeighteenth century reader, the most frivolous of diversions--did not, by the middle of the twentieth century, make you a better person in some way, then you might as well flush the offending volume down the toilet, which was by far the best place for the undigested excreta of dubious nourishment.”

Source: Expletives Deleted: Selected Writings

“One of the things that novels have tended not to concentrate on over the centuries is the fact that people read books.”

People Book Facts Novel Century

Author:Jonathan Lethem

“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

“I don't try to take a person out of our world and put them into my world; that wouldn't work. It's sort of like bad Photoshop: If you see something Photoshopped together - and even if it's done pretty well - the eye catches on it. That happens a lot when people try to cut and paste people from our world into their fourteenth-century historical romance novel.”

People Ifs World Trying Wells Persons Done Happens Eye Together Romance Novel Cutting Century Historical Working It Our World Romance Novel Photoshop

Author:Patrick Rothfuss

“I'd like to be remembered not only for my body of work but also for specific novels. Ideally, I want to be remembered in the same way as Stephen King, who defined and exemplified excellence in the horror genre in the late 20th and early 21st century.”

Way Want Body Novel Century Kings Horror Late Excellence Defined Genre Remembered 21st Century Horror Genre

Author:Nicholas Sparks

“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

“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.”

“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

“We can't write a serious novel in the 21st century without acknowledging the inescapable self-awareness we're stuck with. The idea we're surrounded by falsehoods and lies. It's hard for the thinking person to believe in narratives. And yet we want some place to invest our belief.”

Thinking Want Writing Believe Persons Ideas Self Hard Lying Belief Novel Century Awareness Serious Self Awareness Stuck Narrative Falsehood 21st Century Thinking Person

Author:Michael Helm

“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.”

“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