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Novel Quotes

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Novel Quotes

“I have long admired the visceral storytelling and moral complexity of John Vaillant’s brilliant non-fiction about humankind’s tragically ambivalent relationship with the natural world. Now he brings his abundant literary gifts to a debut novel set in a very real borderland in which human beings are themselves treated like animals. The Jaguar’s Children is a beautifully rendered lament for an imperiled culture and the brave lives that would preserve it. You should read it.”

“Natural writers will often try to force themselves into a form - novel, story, screenplay, or poem - that is not necessarily the appropriate form for the way they see the world... if, in fact, they are writing from the artist's impulse, which is a deep, inchoate vision of some sort of order behind the apparent chaos of life on planet earth, they'll be driven then to express that vision in the creation of the object - the art object.”

Ifs World Way Writing Trying Art Facts Stories Earth Form Artist Order Force Natural Behinds Vision Novel Creation Objects Planets Chaos Driven Impulse Appropriate Screenplays Planet Earth

Author:Robert Olen Butler

“Very little comes easily to our poor, benighted species (the first creature, after all, to experiment with the novel evolutionary inventions of self-conscious philosophy and art). Even the most "obvious," "accurate," and "natural" style of thinking or drawing must be regulated by history and won by struggle. Solutions must therefore arise within a social context and record the complex interactions of mind and environment that define the possibility of human improvement.”

Source: Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

“The thing is that my first novel, which was basically a mystery adventure story, won quite an important award in Spain for young adult fiction, and because of this it became a very successful book, and right now it's some sort of a standard title, it's read widely in many high schools in Spain, so I think, in a way, I was a victim of my own success in the field of young adult fiction, because it was never my own natural register. I never intended to write that kind of fiction, but I became very successful at it.”

“So long as a novelist works selfishly for the pleasure of creating character and situation corresponding to his own illusions, ideals and intuitions, he will always produce something worth while and natural. Directly he takes himself too seriously and begins for the alleged benefit of humanity an elaborate dissection of complexes, he evolves a book that is more ridiculous and tiresome than the most conventional cold cream girl novel of yesterday.”

Source: Willa Cather in person: interviews, speeches, and letters

“Paraphrase, in the sense of summary, is as indispensable to the novel-critic as close analysis is to the critic of lyric poetry. The natural deduction is that novels are paraphrasable whereas poems are not. But this is a false deduction because close analysis is itself a disguised form of paraphrase.”

Form Poetry Literature Natural Novel Critics Analysis Indispensable Deductions Summary Paraphrase Lyric Poetry

Book:Language of Fiction: Essays in Criticism and Verbal Analysis of the English Novel

Source: Language of Fiction: Essays in Criticism and Verbal Analysis of the English Novel

“As a kid, my brother and I would read the same novel, we'd memorize entire pages, reenact the book as it's characters, and would immerse in playing like that for hours. I suppose it was a natural follow up, wanting to still play in a similar fashion, but as an adult.”

Stills Book Play Character Kids Hours Natural Novel Fashion Brother Pages Adults My Brother Follow Up

Author:Irena A. Hoffman

“We have seen that in certain respects operant reinforcement resembles the natural selection of evolutionary theory. Just as genetic characteristics which arise as mutations are selected or discarded by their consequences, so novel forms of behavior are selected or discarded through reinforcement.”

Form Certain Natural Novel Theory Behavior Consequence Arise Characteristics Selection Natural Selection Selected Discarded Mutation Reinforcement

Book:Science And Human Behavior

Source: Science And Human Behavior

“Even though novels were the love of my life, I started off writing poetry. I think because I had a knack for image and lyricism, even though I didn't really have anything to write about, or I didn't know what to write about. I could just couple words together that pleased me and so poetry seemed sort of natural.”

Thinking Knows Writing Together Natural Novel Couple Knack Writing Poetry Love Of My Life

Author:Melissa Febos