Quotessence
Home / Topics / Novel Quotes

Novel Quotes

Browse 6108 quotes about Novel.

Related topics

WritingBookThinkingStoriesIfsPeopleCharacterFirstsKnowsWayWorldReadingYearsWrittenFictionWantReaderTryingKindIdeasFeelsLiteratureShort StoryDifferentLongTwoMenShouldFilmFormWellsEndsI CanNovelistsArtPagesRealGraphicMayLittlesStillsImportantMadeNeedsGraphic NovelsBelieveHumansMeanGivingMindPersonsSometimesBigsDoeSeemsPlayHappensHas BeensFactsHardPlotRomanceWantedWholeLooksMightDoneNextEnoughThreeHeartChildrenSaidUseHistoricalCoursesMysteryWould BeLanguageMovingReasonCrimeFeelingsMomentsFantasyTermDreamPastBitsLastsRomance NovelYoungCertainComicImaginationProcessSelfMatterScreenplaysShowsmore

Novel Quotes

“People think that because a novel's invented, it isn't true. Exactly the reverse is the case. Biography and memoirs can never be wholly true, since they cannot include every conceivable circumstance of what happened. The novel can do that.”

PeopleThinkingCan DoCasesNovelHappenedCircumstancesMemoirReverseBiographies
Book:Hearing Secret Harmonies: Book 12 of A Dance to the Music of Time
Create image

“Just about everything significant in my life happened after I passed forty. I was a housewife and mother, but yearned to be a writer. I worked at my writing whenever I could snatch a moment, and I assembled several manuscripts. I was just about forty when my first novel, East Wind, West Wind, was published. Then a few months later came The Good Earth. My career was launched at last, and it has given me the richest possible satisfaction”

WritingFirstsMomentsEarthLastsMotherGivenCareersNovelHappenedWindMonthsWestSatisfactionEastSignificantFortyHousewifeManuscriptsLife HappensGood Earth
Author:Pearl S. Buck
Create image

“In '94, I started writing a novel about an enormous terrorist act that destroyed the United States. The novel takes place twenty years after this destruction, with all the stuff that we're dealing with now - a dirty war, the disappeared, the concept of terrorism. Anyway, 9/11 happened some years into the process, and I was like, OK, I don't have a novel.”

WritingYearsWarStatesStuffProcessUnitedUnited StatesNovelHappenedConceptsDestructionTwentiesTerrorismTerroristEnormousDestroyedDirty
Author:Junot Diaz
Create image

“Captain Ahab was a man possessed with an obsessional drive to pursue the white whale which had harmed him - which had torn his leg out - to the ends of the Earth, no matter what happened. In the final scene of the novel, Captain Ahab is being borne out to sea, wrapped around the white whale with the rope of his own harpoon and going obviously to his death. It was a scene of almost suicidal finality.”

MenEndsMatterEarthWhiteNovelHappenedSeaSceneNo Matter WhatFinalsLegsPursuePossessedCaptainsTornSuicidalRopeWhalesFinalityAhab
Author:Edward Said
Create image

“Experimental novels are sometimes terribly clever and very seldom read. But the story that appeals to the child sitting on your knee is the one that satisfies the curiosity we all have about what happened then, and then, and then. This is the final restriction put on the technique of telling a story. A basic thing called story is built into the human condition. It's what we are; it's something to which we react.”

HumansChildrenSometimesStoriesNovelHappenedConditionsSittingBuiltFinalsCuriosityTechniqueCleverAppealsKneesHuman ConditionRestrictionBasic Things
Author:William Golding
Create image