Best novel & ifs Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 5

“I am really interested in who owns ideas of religion. What if I say I'm a libertarian, socialist, Occupy-supporting, anti-war, Christian? Is that a controversial idea? I don't see anything really in the original semiotics of Christianity, in the specific parable of the radical socialist Jew from Galilee who becomes the hero figure in the Homeric-word-of-mouth-gossip-novel that becomes the Bible that should make that a paradox.”

“Writers need restrictions. If somebody just says, "Hey, do you want to write a novel, or an article, or a movie, or a short story, you get shut down."”

Ifs Want Needs Writing Stories Novel Hey Articles Short Story Restriction

Author:Mitchell Hurwitz

“Travelers learn not just foreign customs and curious cuisines and unfamiliar beliefs and novel forms of government. They learn, if they are lucky, humility.”

Ifs Government Form Belief Novel Humility Lucky Curious Customs Traveler Forms Of Government Unfamiliar Cuisine

Author:Paul Fussell

“And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the novel are known to me. As if the story has already taken place, and it's my responsibility to put it in the right order to tell it to you.”

Ifs Want Writing Firsts Important Stories Order Responsibility Known Novel Taken Connections Sentences Already Taken

Author:John Irving

“If everybody lived as I do, surely the writing of romance novels would never have come into being.”

Ifs Writing Romance Novel Romance Novel

Author:Albert Einstein

“If I can give a young author any advice, whatsoever, never let anyone announce the film sale of your first novel. Film rights are sold to almost every novel, but it shouldn't be the lead story in your first engagement with the press. Then you end up getting reviews like "a novel made for the screen" and things like that.”

Ifs Giving Firsts Made I Can Ends Stories Film Young Novel Rights Advice Presses Screens Reviews Engagement

Author:William Monahan

“Certainly some guy eating cardboard in Cincinnati has lost any ordinary impetus to review your novel decently if he's just read you just got six figures out of Warner Bros - which incidentally was not true.”

Ifs Guy Lost Novel Figures Six Eating Ordinary Reviews Impetus Bros Warner Bros

Author:William Monahan

“A novel according to my taste, does not come into the moderately good class unless it contains some person whom one can thoroughly love - and if a pretty woman, all the better.”

Ifs Persons Doe Class Novel Taste Pretty Woman

Book:Autobiography and Selected Letters

Source: Autobiography and Selected Letters

“If only a group of people were more important to me than the idea of a Novel, I might begin a novel.”

People Ifs Important Ideas Might Novel Groups

Author:Sylvia Plath

“My favorite novel in the world is Frankenstein. I'm going to misquote it horribly, but the monster says, "I have such love in me, more than you can imagine. But, if I cannot provoke it, I will provoke fear."”

Ifs World Novel Imagine My Favorite Monsters Provoking

Author:Guillermo del Toro

“I feel quite at home writing short stories but nervous and anxious when writing novels, as if the bad time of consecutive failures might arise again.”

Ifs Feels Writing Stories Home Might Novel Arise Nervous Short Story Anxious Bad Times Consecutive Writing Short Writing Short Stories

Author:Charles Baxter

“I felt there was a certain amount of violence in the graphic and that it could still be cheated on screen so you could still have a hard PG-13 and open up your audience. Anybody can read the graphic novel. If you're 14, you can go out and buy it, and I felt that if you're 14 you should be able to see this movie [The Loosers].”

Ifs Should Stills Hard Able Certain Felt Novel Audience Violence Amount Screens Graphic Cheated Graphic Novels Cheated On

Author:Sylvain White

“It might be more useful, if not necessarily more true, to think of photography as a narrow, deep area between the novel and film.”

Ifs Thinking Might Film Novel Photography Areas

Author:Lewis Baltz

“Most people can start a short story or a novel. If you're a writer, you can finish them. Finish enough of them, and you may be good enough to be publishable.”

People Ifs May Enough Stories Novel Be Good Good Enough Short Story

Author:Neil Gaiman

“Going from memoir to fiction was fantastic. I had been afraid to move away from memoir; I'd written some novel drafts, but they weren't well received by my agent at the time, and it had been drilled into me that "memoir outsells fiction two to one" (not sure if that's true anymore, or if it ever was), so I felt like the only smart thing to do, professionally, was to keep mining my life for painful moments to recapitulate.”

Ifs Wells Two Moments Moving Felt Fiction Novel Written Smart Painful Memoir Agents Fantastic Things To Do Not Sure Mining Painful Moments

Author:Janice Erlbaum

“I can remember the times when I started including humor in novels that were suspenseful. I was told you can't do that because you can't keep the audience in suspense if they're laughing. My attitude was, if the character has a sense of humor, then that makes the character more real because that's how we deal with the vicissitudes of life, we deal with it through humor.”

Ifs I Can Real Character Remember Deals Attitude Novel Audience Laughing Including Suspense Sense Of Humor My Attitude Vicissitudes

Author:Dean Koontz

“I sometimes think if I had gone to Oxford or Cambridge and looked like a handsome young guy who could be in an Evelyn Waugh novel or something, I'd be a massive movie star. But there's a longevity to what I do. It's more reliable. Someone isn't deciding that I'm the next big thing.”

Ifs Thinking Sometimes Bigs Young Guy Next Stars Novel Gone Massive Longevity Handsome Big Things Movie Star Oxford Cambridge Young Guys

Author:Eddie Marsan

“Along the (writing) way accidents happen, detours get taken... But these are not "divine" accidents; I don't believe in those. I believe you have constructive accidents en route through a novel only because you have mapped a clear way. If you have confidence that you have a clear direction to take, you always have confidence to explore other ways; if they prove to be mere digressions, you'll recognize that and make the necessary revisions. The more you know about a book, the freer you can be to fool around. The less you know, the tighter you get.”

“The novel may stimulate you to think. It may satisfy your aesthetic sense. It may arouse your moral emotions. But if it does not entertain you it is a bad novel.”

Ifs Thinking May Doe Emotion Moral Novel Aesthetic

Author:W. Somerset Maugham

“I have a backlog of novels which I would love to be working on and would be working on if I were not obliged to hold down a full time job.”

Ifs Would Be Jobs Novel Obliged Full Time Jobs

Author:John Scott

“If I had the luxury of working as a full time writer, I think you would see novels appearing on a much more regular, and frequent, basis.”

Ifs Thinking Novel Bases Luxury Appearing

Author:John Scott

“My experience with My Sister Rosa showed me, once again, that I have a much easier time of it if I sell my novels after I finish them, not before. I'm lucky that I'm in a position where I'm able to do that.”

Ifs Able Novel Position Easier Lucky Sells My Sister Rosa Easier Times

Author:Justine Larbalestier

“There's a difference between doing memoir and writing a novel. If I had put the story of the boy killing my dog - and that was Eric also, what a little monster he was! - in a novel, even if I took it directly from life, it would be fiction.”

Ifs Writing Littles Stories Would Be Differences Fiction Boys Novel Dog Killing Monsters Memoir My Dog Eric Doing Me

Author:Paul Auster

“The biggest book for me, when I was fifteen, was Crime and Punishment, which I read in a kind of fever. When I put it down, I thought, if this is what novels are then I want to be a novelist.”

Ifs Want Kind Book Novel Crime Punishment Novelists Fifteen Fever Crime And Punishment

Author:Paul Auster

“If you want meaning, you read poetry or a novel or something, you don't read song lyrics. You're supposed to listen to them with music.”

Ifs Want Song Novel Want Me You Want Me If You Want Me

Author:Roddy Woomble

“First of all, the novel should be a critique of the novels that have come before it in a language that broadens the audience of American literature. Second, it's really got to be invested in a number of what-if questions.”

Ifs Should Firsts Literature Language Numbers Novel Audience What If Critique American Literature

Author:Kiese Laymon

“So much history, if you or I were to write it, could seem a fiction. These separations, these lines that tell us this is fiction or non-fiction, that this is history or this is a novel, are often useless.”

Ifs Writing Seems Lines Fiction Novel Separation Useless Non Fiction

Author:Jamaica Kincaid

“I wasn't trying to write a corrective novel - that would just end up tasting like medicine, and I tried to stay away from polemics as best I could. I think that, if anything, Fobbit is my way of showing readers there's another side to war - the backstage of combat, if you will. If you play a word association game with Americans and say "war," what's the first thing that comes to mind? Soldiers running across a battlefield through a hail of bullets, right? Rambo, smoke, explosions. In Fobbit, I hope readers will see something a little different”

“If Fobbit leaves a reader feeling stranded in some bland in-between territory, then I haven't done my job. But having said all that, I didn't consciously write the book with a particular moral intent. I took what I experienced and processed it through the sausage factory of fiction. It's up to readers to interpret what's on the page - as is the case with any novel.”

Ifs Writing Said Book Done Feelings Jobs Fiction Moral Cases Novel Havens Particular Reader Pages Territory Factories Sausage Bland Stranded

Author:Dave Abrams

“I'm trying to break myself of that habit [of not writing out a first draft ] because I'm working on a couple novels and I know if I tried to write those books the way I wrote the stories it would take me years to finish.”

Ifs Knows Way Writing Trying Years Firsts Book Stories Break Novel Couple Habit Take Me

Author:Donald Ray Pollock

“If writers stuck to firsthand experience, novels would be pretty limited.”

Ifs Would Be Novel Stuck

Book:The Tenderness of Wolves: A Novel

Source: The Tenderness of Wolves: A Novel

“If my novel gets any attention in Bulgaria, it will be as a scandal: a book about a teacher at a famous school and his relationship with a prostitute. I doubt very much it will be evaluated on its merits as literature. If Bulgarian were the book's only language, that would be painful and limiting to me as a writer. Since my book also exists in English - where it isn't scandalous at all - I feel comfortable with the possibility of scandal.”

Ifs Feels Book Would Be School Literature Language Attention Novel Doubt Teacher Possibility Comfortable Painful Merit Scandal Scandalous Bulgaria Bulgarians

Author:Garth Greenwell

“You say fate is almost indispensable to literature - I think it's completely indispensable, at least in a novel, because a novel always has a plot. Even if nothing happens, even if someone just spends a day walking around Dublin, or whatever, there's still something going on.”

Ifs Thinking Stills Happens Literature Novel Fate Walking Things Happen Plot Indispensable Dublin

Author:Daniel Kehlmann

“When I look at life I try to be as agnostic and unmetaphysical as possible. So I have to admit that, most probably, we do not have a fate. But I think that's something that draws us to novels - that the characters always have a fate. Even if it's a terrible fate, at least they have one.”

Ifs Thinking Trying Looks Character Novel Fate Terrible Draws Agnostic

Author:Daniel Kehlmann

“In a couple of Ahdaf Soueif's novels, she gets at the certain kind of English that's being spoken by Egyptians. It's a beautiful, expressive English but it is non-standard, "broken" English that happens to be efficient, eloquent, and communicates perfectly well even if it is breaking rules.”

Ifs Wells Kind Happens Beautiful Certain Novel Broken Couple Standards Communicate Efficient Eloquent Expressive Breaking Rules Broken English

Author:Elliott Colla

“Anthropologists are great at novelistic observations. I would be thrilled if this novel would encourage anthropologists to write what they see in fictional form.”

Ifs Writing Would Be Form Novel Observation Anthropologists

Author:Lily King

“I had to detach myself from myself, if that makes any sense, to conjure an authentic first-person voice. In that sense, it was similar to writing a first-person novel. But I was writing about real people, not fictional ones - myself, my family, my friends and boyfriends and ex-husband, and that was extremely tricky.”

People Ifs Writing Firsts Persons Real Voice Novel Husband My Friends My Family Exes Tricky First Person Ex Husband

Author:Kate Christensen

“If you die without agency as a child, but you have agency in your body [in the novel], how is it to be enacted unless it is being reimagined by a writer?”

Ifs Children Body Dies Novel Your Body Agency

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

“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

“It's an unusual way to write a crime novel, to have these lingering, fairly large story points, but it's something I knew I had to do if I wanted to write a sequel...but, you know, people still have to read and enjoy this book, or it's a moot point.”

People Ifs Knows Way Writing Stills Book Stories Wanted Enjoy Novel Crime Unusual Sequels Lingering Crime Novels

Author:Tod Goldberg

“It does no one any good to say their novel sucks if you don't have an idea how to make it better, how to approach it from different angles and make it work. It's obviously a subjective process, right? But the thing about subjectivity, at least in the classroom, is that you're banking on your professor's subjectivity to be both personal and professional - that he or she has some sense about the world outside the workshop.”

Ifs World Doe Ideas Different Process Novel Approach Working It Professors Classroom Angle Banking Subjective Subjectivity Workshops Different Angles

Author:Tod Goldberg

“The hardest thing in a novel is time. You've got [a line like] "two weeks later, he woke up with a headache," and you've got to add up that entire two weeks and what the date is and whether it works. That kind of stuff drives me crazy and if I don't have it exactly right, I can't move forward because I don't feel confident.”

Ifs Feels Kind I Can Two Moving Stuff Lines Novel Week Crazy Add Hardest Moving Forward Hardest Thing Two Weeks Headache Drive Me Crazy

Author:T.C. Boyle

“The DNA of the novel - which, if I begin to write nonfiction, I will write about this - is that: the title of the novel is the whole novel. The first line of the novel is the whole novel. The point of view is the whole novel. Every subplot is the whole novel. The verb tense is the whole novel.”

Ifs Writing Firsts Whole Lines Views Novel Point Of View Titles Nonfiction Dna Tense Verbs Subplots

Author:Mary Kay Zuravleff

“If a novel or a story works, you don't stop thinking about it; it doesn't truly end.”

Ifs Thinking Ends Stories Novel

Author:Peter Orner

“I don't think about the reader in any conscious way that impacts the writing, as far as, Hey, most readers would like this! But at the same time, if it were presented to me: "John, you're going to write a novel. It's going to take you a few years. When you're done with it, there's a law that no one's allowed to read it." I don't think I would write it. I want someone to read it!”

Ifs Thinking Way Want Writing Years Done Law Novel Reader Conscious Impact Hey

Author:John Brandon

“I've been asked if I'd consider doing Ropes as a straight novel - which is flattering, I suppose - but I can't imagine why I'd want to limit myself that way. There's a certain immediacy we gain from that specific image of Fred being struck by a revelation, of those union workers appearing from the shadows in an alley, of a lonely woman wondering for just a moment if she should make a pass at this young man in her hotel room”

“For a really long time [before writing the novel], I was watching a lot of serial killer movies and I started to wonder if this was a trend and if other people were doing the same thing. That's what happens when you suddenly have a critical perspective on your own behavior.”

People Ifs Writing Long Happens Wonder Novel Perspective Behavior Long Time Critical Trends Killers Serials Serial Killer Really Long

Author:Lucy Corin

“I saved letters from my boss. There are things in there that are directly transcribed. I was so glad I did that. Sometimes when I was writing the book I wondered if some little writer hobbit part of my brain was back there puppeteering that action. But it really never, on any conscious level, occurred to me that I would write about it. I will say, I thought probably some day there would be an ancillary character in some novel - not in the one I was currently writing - that would be a dominatrix or something.”

Ifs Writing Littles Book Sometimes Character Would Be Action Levels Brain Novel Conscious Letters Saved Glad Boss

Author:Melissa Febos

“There's also an immediacy to everything that has changed everybody's expectations. Now if I can't get a hold of somebody on their cell phone I'm, like, angry with them. And in my mind, all the things that I really value in terms of art, really good novels or films or comics, I know they all take a long, long time to create, and they take a lot of concentration and dedication...and I just feel like the training for that is becoming more and more rare when people are used to seeing things like YouTube clips, and being able to acquire things instantly.”

“As a matter of fact, I constantly tell audiences all over the world that the single greatest icon of American culture from the publication of "To Kill A Mockingbird" was that novel so that if we say, what conversation can we have that would lead us on a road of tolerance, and teachers have decided that if you're going to teach values in a school in America, the answer that American teachers at all kinds of schools have come up with, just let Harper Lee teach "To Kill A Mockingbird." And then all the teacher has to do is stand back and guide the discussion.”

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