“I mean, there are many other directors who are probably both more skilled and excited to adapt novels or work within certain genre conventions. I'd like to do that kind of work someday, but for better or worse I'm too drawn by my own material.” KindMeanCertainMy OwnNovelMaterialsDirectorsExcitedGenreSomedayConventions Author:Todd Solondz
“When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a Novel.” NeedsWritingRomanceCertainWishFeltNovelFashionMaterialsClaimsAssumingEntitledLatitude Author:Nathaniel Hawthorne
“There have been 15 or 16 screenplays over the years, including one by me, but none of them has gotten made because Paramount is a huge studio. The Dice Man is an anti-establishment cult novel and you don't normally make studio films from such dark comedy material.” MenYearsHas BeensMadeFilmDarkNovelComedyMaterialsHugeIncludingStudiosEstablishmentCultScreenplaysDiceParamountDark Comedy Author:Luke Rhinehart
“No writer, I believe, should attempt a novel before he is thirty, and not then unless he has been hopelessly and helplessly involved in life. For the writer who goes out to find material for a novel, as a fishermen goes out to sea to fish, will certainly not write a good novel. Life has to be lived thoughtlessly, unconsciously, at full tilt and for no purpose except its own sake before it becomes, eventually, good material for a novel.” ShouldWritingBelieveHas BeensPurposeI BelieveNovelSeaMaterialsInvolvedSakeFishesThirtyFishermanTilt Author:Pearl S. Buck
“I've told youngsters not to write their autobiographical novel at the age of twenty-one; to save it for the time when they're fifty-one or sixty-one. They should write other novels first, to learn their craft; they shouldn't cut their teeth on the valuable material of childhood because they'll never have better material, ever, to work with.” ShouldWritingFirstsAgeNovelCuttingChildhoodMaterialsTwentiesValuableTeethCraftsFiftySixtyAutobiographyTwenty OneYoungsters Author:Laura Z. Hobson
“There are novels that end well, but in between there are human beings acting like human beings. And human beings are not perfect. All of the motives a human being may have, which are mixed, that's the novelists' materials. That's where they have to go. And a lot of that just isn't pretty. We like to think of ourselves as really, really good people. But look in the mirror. Really look. Look at your own mixed motives. And then multiply that.” PeopleThinkingHumansWellsLooksMayEndsHuman BeingsPerfectActingNovelMaterialsMirrorsNovelistsMotiveGood PeopleNot Perfect Author:Margaret Atwood
“I love short stories - reading and writing them. The best short stories distill all the potency of a novel into a small but heady draught. They are perfect reading material for the bus or train or for a lunchtime break. Everything extraneous has been strained off by the author. The best short stories pack the heft of any novel, yet resonate like poetry.” WritingHas BeensStoriesReadingPerfectBreakNovelMaterialsTrainBusShort StoryPacksReading And WritingShort LovePotencyDraughtLunchtimeBest Short Author:Ian Rankin
“My remembrance of the past is a novel I am constantly recomposing; and it would not be a historical novel, but sheer fiction, if the material events which mark and ballast my career had not their public dates and characters scientifically discoverable.” IfsCharacterPastFictionCareersNovelEventsMaterialsMarkHistoricalSheerRemembranceHistorical NovelsBallast Book:The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings Source: The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings
“The flimsy little protestations that mark the front gate of every novel, the solemn statements that any resemblance to real persons living or dead is entirely coincidental, are fraudulent every time. A writer has no other material to make his people from than the people of his experience ... The only thing the writer can do is to recombine parts, suppress some characterisitics and emphasize others, put two or three people into one fictional character, and pray the real-life prototypes won't sue.” PeopleLittlesPersonsTwoRealCharacterThreeCan DoNovelFrontsMaterialsPrayingMarkReal LifeStatementsGatesSolemnResemblanceReal PersonPrototypeFictional Character Author:Wallace Stegner
“It has been the sad experience of many that much of the best and the most beautiful is lost to those whose mental food consists exclusively of the sensational paper or the cheap novel, or of that frothy mass of waste material which is thrown up like scum upon the molten metal of life--novelettes, serials, and fragments of a type which neither teach the ignorant, nor strengthen the weak, nor develop the immature.” Has BeensBeautifulLostTeachNovelMaterialsTypeWastePaperMassWeakIgnorantThrownMetalsFragmentsImmatureSerialsSensationalScum Book:Vegetarianism and Occultism Source: Vegetarianism and Occultism
“I often notice how students can gain the capacity to use certain critical methodologies through engaging with very different texts - how a graphic novel about gentrification and an anthology about Hurricane Katrina and a journalistic account of war profiteering might all lead to very similar classroom conversations and critical engagement. I'm particularly interested in this when teaching law students who often resist reading interdisciplinary materials or materials they interpret as too theoretical.” DifferentWarUseMightLawCertainReadingNovelTeachingStudentsMaterialsConversationGainsCapacityAccountsCriticalEngagementClassroomEngagingTheoreticalGraphicHurricanesAnthologyMethodologyKatrinaGraphic NovelsJournalisticHurricane KatrinaGentrificationLaw StudentsInterdisciplinary Author:Dean Spade
“Your interviews or blog posts or whatever are less supplements to your novel than part of it. I'm not private, but I believe in literary form - I'll use my life as material for art (I don't know how not to do this) and I'll use art as a way of exploring that passage of life into art and vice versa, but that's not the same thing as thinking that any of the details of my life are interesting or relevant on their own.” ThinkingKnowsWayBelieveArtUseFormI BelieveInterestingNovelKnow HowMaterialsVicesDetailsI Believe InPostsInterviewsPassagesRelevantExploringBlogsVice VersaSupplements Author:Ben Lerner
“Novel-writing is a highly skilled and laborious trade. One does not just sit behind a screen jotting down other people's conversation. One has for one's raw material every single thing one has ever seen or heard or felt, and one has to go over that vast, smoldering rubbish-heap of experience, half stifled by fumes and dust, scraping and delving until one finds a few discarded valuables. Then one has to assemble these tarnished and dented fragments, polish them, set them in order, and try to make a coherent and significant arrangement of them.” PeopleWritingTryingDoeOrderFeltBehindsHalfNovelHeardMaterialsConversationTradeScreensSignificantDustArrangementsFragmentsPolishRubbishNovel WritingRaw MaterialsDiscardedScrapingDelving Author:Evelyn Waugh
“I look on my life as raw material for my novels: that's just the way I am, and it frees me from any inhibitions.” WayLooksNovelMaterialsRaw MaterialsInhibitions Author:Imre Kertész
“In general, each form is a relief from the other forms. I can't write a novel after a novel. I just use up all the material each time, and I need to rest.” NeedsWritingI CanUseFormNovelMaterialsRelief Author:Rick Moody
“Where the novel makes use of material from my life it does so because it's aesthetically convenient, not because of any allegiance it has to any verifiable facts.” DoeFactsUseNovelMaterialsConvenientAllegiance Author:Garth Greenwell
“I included receipts, faxes, newspaper clippings, all sorts of things. I've read novels composed entirely of emails or letters, but not assembled across this kind of mix of materials. I wanted to create the feeling of a detective going through a box of clues.” KindFeelingsWantedNovelMaterialsLettersBoxesNewspapersClueEmailDetectivesReceiptsFax Author:Brian Pinkerton
“The R.I.P.D. picture is like a graphic novel, I guess. I don't know if it's like a typical kind of comic book. But there is great source material for those kinds of films.” IfsKnowsKindBookFilmNovelMaterialsSourceComicComic BookTypicalGraphicGraphic Novels Author:Ryan Reynolds