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Novel Quotes

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Novel Quotes

“I would like to write a novel, or at least try to write one, although my motives are not entirely pure. For one thing, I get asked about writing novels so much that I feel guilty about never having written one. And although I have no strong desire to write a novel, I would hate not to try. That would just be silly. On the other hand, I hate the idea of slogging through something that turns out to be not good.”

Feels Writing Trying Ideas Hands Desire Hate Turns Strong Novel Written One Thing Pure I Hate Silly Guilty Motive Being Silly Strong Desire

Author:Kelly Link

“The desire to write a novel is the single required prerequisite for writing a novel.”

Writing Desire Novel Prerequisites

Book:13 Ways of Looking at the Novel

Source: 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel

“Americans and their desire to be novelists, the American novel should be listed in medical dictionaries alongside Megalomania and Obsessional Neuroses.”

Should Desire United States Novel Medical Novelists Dictionary Neurosis Megalomania

Author:Francine du Plessix Gray

“I'm inspired by dreams and shadows, obsession and desire. By nature, I'm a dream collector and never stop working. I question people about their weirdest dreams and the strangest, most inexplicable experiences they've had. All this information whirls around in my mind, and new dreams emerge that form the seeds of stories and novels.”

People Mind Stories Dream Form Desire Novel Information Shadow Inspired Seeds Obsession Collectors Inexplicable

Author:Storm Constantine

“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.”

“A disturbing novel about dreams and wishes, a nightmarish distaff monkey's paw of a book that it's impossible to forget. Lisa Tuttle remains our preeminent chronicler of family madness and desire.”

Book Dream Desire Wish Forget Novel Impossible Madness Remains Monkeys Disturbing Paws Impossible To Forget

Author:Neil Gaiman

“A new opinion counts as true just in proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock”

Truth Desire Individual Belief Opinion Novel Proportion

Book:James and Dewey on Belief and Experience

Source: James and Dewey on Belief and Experience

“If people only knew what lies at the heart of my novels! What a tumult of desires these carefully written pages conceal! I sometimes have a loathing for the furious cravings that give me no peace except when I am working.”

People Ifs Giving Heart Sometimes Lying Desire Novel Written Pages Give Me Craving Furious Loathing Tumult

Book:Diary, 1928-1957

Source: Diary, 1928-1957

“Madame Bovary is one my favorite novels. Emma Bovary will always be an enigma, but as the years pass, I feel that I understand her better. She has a violent nostalgia, almost an infantile nostalgia, to be understood by the men surrounding her. I like her relentless fight for independence, her rebellion against the mediocre, and her quest for the sublime, even if she burns her wigs in the process. I like that Flaubert never judges her morally for her self-destructiveness, for her desperate attempt to satisfy her wildest desires and appetites.”

“If you had told me twenty years ago that I would write a novel set in Russia, much less two, I simply wouldn't have believed you. I had no familiarity with Russia or its history, but part of what drives me as a reader, and more and more as a writer, is curiosity, the desire to explore unfamiliar terrain and inhabit alternate lives.”

Ifs Writing Years Two Desire Novel Reader Years Ago Twenties Curiosity Russia Familiarity Unfamiliar Terrain

Author:Debra Dean

“I've heard some readers saying they wished the story was longer, and I completely understand that desire - we all like to sink into a nice, long novel.”

Long Stories Desire Novel Nice Heard Reader

Author:Theodora Goss

“In Among the White Moon Faces, I wrote about my desire to be a writer as rooted in my obsessive hours of reading English novels and poetry. It was that spur, that desire, that pushed me to set aside love and marriage in my early twenties.”

Faces Desire Reading Hours White Novel Moon Twenties Rooted Obsessive Spurs Love And Marriage

Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim