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Novel Quotes

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Novel Quotes

“As an editor, I read Charlotte Rogan's amazing debut novel, 'The Lifeboat,' when it was still in manuscript. I read it in one night, and I really wanted my company to publish it, but we lost it to another house. It's such a wonderful combination of beautiful writing and suspenseful storytelling.”

Writing Stills Wanted Beautiful Night House Lost Company Novel Wonderful Storytelling Combination Editors Publish One Night Manuscripts Debut Beautiful Writing Charlotte Lifeboats

Author:Karen Thompson Walker

“The seriousness or otherwise of the subject matter is often irrelevent to the question of whether a book is any good. F Scott Fitzgerald wrote a great and beautiful novel which mainly involved shallow people going to parties in a rich guy's house. By contrast, all sorts of terrible books are published every month about men slaughtering people for no reason - a serious matter which, in itself, does not make the author worthy of serious consideration.”

“If Edgar Allan Poe were alive today, his agent would be constantly slapping him upside the head with tightly rolled copies of his brilliant short stories and novelettes, yelling, 'Full-length novels, you moron! Pay attention! What's the matter with you -- are you shooting heroin or something? Write for the market! No more of this midlength 'Fall of the House of Usher' crap”

“[On Dashiell Hammett:] ... he is so hard-boiled you could roll him on the White House lawn.”

Hard House White Novel Mystery White House Lawns Mystery Novels

Book:A month of Saturdays: thirty-one famous pieces by

Source: A month of Saturdays: thirty-one famous pieces by

“The return to a favorite novel is generally tied up with changes in oneself that must be counted as improvements, but have the feel of losses. It is like going back to a favorite house, country, person; nothing is where it belongs, including one's heart.”

Feels Heart Persons Book Country Reading House Loss Novel Return Including Oneself Improvement Tied Book Reading Tied Up

Book:Occasional prose

Source: Occasional prose

“Every year the literary press praises dozens if not hundreds of novels to the skies, asserting explicitly or implicitly that these books will probably not be suffering water damage in the basements of their authors' houses 20 years from now. But historically, anyway, that's not the way the novelistic ecology works.”

Ifs Way Years Book Suffering House Water Novel Sky Praise Presses Damage Dozen Ecology Basements

Author:Lev Grossman

“A psychologically engrossing novel about the homes we make-in our houses, in our neighborhoods, and in the hearts of our loved ones. Laken takes on that great unspoken American subject-class-and does so with frankness, acuity and surpassing feeling. DREAM HOUSE is a memorable debut novel from a fully mature talent.”

Heart Doe Feelings Home Dream House Class Novel Subjects Talent Memorable Neighborhood Mature Loved Ones Unspoken Debut Surpassing Frankness Dream House

Author:Peter Ho Davies

“Plot comes first. The plot is the archictecture of your novel. You wouldn't build a house without a plan. If I wrote without a plot, it would just be a pile of bricks. Characters are your servants. They must serve your plot.”

Ifs Firsts Character House Novel Plans Servant Plot Bricks

Author:Barbara Kingsolver

“Don't wait for success, but for the respect and interest of those who read you. At the start it could be a classmate, someone who shares your interests. Before sending off the manuscript for a novel to a publishing house, it would be a good idea to try writing short stories, and publishing them in a local magazine.”

“In the great city of San Francisco, where I used to live, at 2 in the morning every other Victorian house has somebody who is writing the great American novel. And the city is not loaded with James Joyces or Virginia Woolfs. But entrepreneurship is about distorted views of reality.”

Writing Reality Used House Views Business Cities Morning Novel Entrepreneurship San Francisco Virginia Loaded Victorian Great American Great Cities Joyce

Author:Tom Peters

“I'd written my first novel for adults, which was called Basic Eight and was set in a high school, and we were having a devil of a time selling it. It ended up in the hands of an editor of a children's publishing house, for which it was entirely inappropriate. She said, "Well, we can't publish this, but I think you should write something for children," which I thought was a really terrible idea.”

“You can only look forward to a South Dakota winter if, as with childbirth, remodeling a house, or writing a novel, you're able to forget how bad it was the last time.”

Ifs Writing Looks Able Lasts House Forget Novel South Winter Last Time Childbirth Dakota South Dakota Remodeling

Book:Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a Black Hills Ranch

Source: Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a Black Hills Ranch

“Since my first novel was rescued from a slush pile, it makes me sad that most publishing houses no longer accept unsolicited manuscripts. Nor are many willing to take chances on novels that are not deemed immediately "marketable."”

Firsts House Chance Accepting Novel Willing Publishing Take A Chance Manuscripts Publishing House Slush

Author:Katherine Paterson

“Too often, in novels that are speculative, God is a kind of kryptonite, and that's about all that it is, and it goes back to Dracula, where someone dumps a crucifix in Count Dracula's face, and he pulls away and runs back into his house. That's not religion. That's some kind of juju, like a talisman.”

Kind Running Faces House Novel Dump Talismans Kryptonite Juju Count Dracula

Author:Stephen King

“The novel may be dead as a commercial form. When art forms things die as commercial forms, something happens to the practice of those arts that isn't very pleasant. It used to be that a poet like Tennyson could keep his house and his coach-and-four and his staff of six servants on the income from poetry. That doesn't happen anymore.”

May Art Happens Form Used Dies House Practice Novel Four Poet Six Coaches Things Happen Income Used To Be Servant Pleasant Staff Tennyson

Author:William Monahan

“I really want to write a novel. A few years ago I went so far as to do the cliché thing and rent this house in upstate [New York]. I still have the story, but I got 15,000, 20,000 words in and it was like, This is falling apart. I can't figure out.”

Want Writing Years Stills I Can Stories Fall House Novel Figures New York Years Ago Falling Apart Upstate New York

Author:Craig Finn

“The moment you carry out any of your dreams or your fantasies - travel around the world, climbing a high mountain, buying a new house, writing a novel, carrying out a sexual fantasy, traveling to an unknown country - the moment you carry out your dreams, it's always, by definition less perfect and rosy than it had been as a dream. This is the nature of dreams.”

World Writing Country Moments Dream House Perfect Fantasy Novel Mountain Definitions Around The World Your Dreams Buying Climbing Rosy

Author:Amos Oz