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Novel Quotes

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Novel Quotes

“The novels take longer to write than the picture book texts, and they do take a different sort of concentration. However, a very short, simple story that works well is just as exciting to me as any longer and more complex book.”

Writing Wells Book Different Stories Simple Novel Exciting Complexes Concentration Picture Books

Author:Margaret Mahy

“Very little comes easily to our poor, benighted species (the first creature, after all, to experiment with the novel evolutionary inventions of self-conscious philosophy and art). Even the most "obvious," "accurate," and "natural" style of thinking or drawing must be regulated by history and won by struggle. Solutions must therefore arise within a social context and record the complex interactions of mind and environment that define the possibility of human improvement.”

Source: Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

“The Da Vinci Code may well be the only novel ever written that begins with the word 'renowned'... I think what enabled the first word to tip me off that I was about to spend a number of hours in the company of one of the worst prose stylists in the history of literature was this. Putting curriculum vitae details into complex modifiers on proper names or definite descriptions is what you do in journalistic stories about deaths; you just don't do it in describing an event in a narrative... Why did I keep reading? Because London Heathrow is a long way from San Francisco International.”

“So long as a novelist works selfishly for the pleasure of creating character and situation corresponding to his own illusions, ideals and intuitions, he will always produce something worth while and natural. Directly he takes himself too seriously and begins for the alleged benefit of humanity an elaborate dissection of complexes, he evolves a book that is more ridiculous and tiresome than the most conventional cold cream girl novel of yesterday.”

Source: Willa Cather in person: interviews, speeches, and letters

“To read a novel is a difficult and complex art.”

Art Reading Difficult Novel Complexes

Book:The Common Reader

Source: The Common Reader

“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

“More often than not, real life is so rich, complex and unpredictable that it would seem completely implausible in the pages of a novel.”

Real Seems Life Is Novel Rich Pages Complexes Real Life Unpredictable

Author:Candice Millard

“A lyrical, brave and complex novel that takes enormous risks and pulls them all off.”

Novel Risk Brave Complexes Enormous Lyrical

Author:Peter Straub

“Philip Galanes makes his debut with a novel that is both heartbreaking and deftly comic, the story of a young man struggling with his most primitive desires--wanting and needing. It is a novel about the complex relationships between parents and children, a story of loss and of our unrelenting need for acknowledgment, to be seen as who we are. And in the end it is simply a love story for our time.”

“The degree of talent, the size of the gift, is immaterial. All artists must listen, but not all hear great symphonies, see wide canvasses, conceive complex, character-filled novels. No matter, the creative act is the same, and it is an act of faith.”

Matter Character Artist Novel Creative Talent Degrees Filled Complexes Size Wide Symphony Complex Characters

Author:Madeleine L'Engle

“In novels you're able to occupy character's internal thoughts and it's really hard to do in a film or a TV show. When you're reading a character's thoughts or when it's in first person, you're reading kind of their own story, so you have the opportunity to see what makes that character complex or complicated. And to me that's what the whole point of fiction is.”

Firsts Kind Persons Hard Whole Character Stories Shows Able Film Reading Opportunity Fiction Novel Tvs Complexes Complicated Internals Tv Shows First Person

Author:Joe Meno

“Novels are almost like music or poetry - they just come to me in simple sentences, whereas I think my pieces get more and more complex ever since I've started using a computer.”

Thinking Simple Novel Pieces Computer Complexes Sentences

Author:Joan Didion

“Movies are not novels, and that's why, when filmmakers try to adapt novels, particularly long or complex novels, the result is almost always failure. It can't be done.”

Trying Long Done Results Novel Complexes Filmmaker

Book:Conversations with Paul Auster

Source: Conversations with Paul Auster

“I hope that the relationship of the title to the novel [ What Belongs To You] gets more complex with each section of the book: that maybe it begins by resonating with the question of prostitution - to what extent can a body be commodified, what exactly are you renting or purchasing when you pay for sex - and deepens over the course of the book to address larger questions of ownership and belonging.”

Book Body Courses Sex Pay Novel Complexes Titles Addresses Belonging Ownership Sections Prostitution Purchasing Resonating

Author:Garth Greenwell

“The moment in which the narrator, reaching for his boots, becomes vividly and lastingly aware of the finality of his grandmother's death is another such moment. It would be interesting to explore Proust's great novel from the perspective of seeing how stable synthetic complexes are formed and modified.”

Moments Would Be Interesting Novel Seeing Perspective Complexes Reaching Grandmother Boots Stable Finality Narrators Synthetic Proust Great Novels

Author:Philip Kitcher