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Novel Quotes

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Novel Quotes

“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

“Novel writing is a kind of private pleasure, even if nothing comes of it in worldly terms.”

Ifs Writing Kind Term Pleasure Novel Worldly Novel Writing

Author:Barbara Pym

“Whenever summer rolls around I begin to realize that I'm a complete and utter book snob. In relation to reading, I have absolutely no guilty pleasures at all. No graphic novels. No murder mysteries. My summer read is really no different from my winter read. I know many bookshops and magazines would have me believe that our summer forays are different, but literature is literature, and unfortunately snobbery is snobbery.”

“To write a novel may be pure pleasure. To live a novel presents certain difficulties. As for reading a novel, I do my best to get out of it.”

Writing May Certain Reading Pleasure Novel Pure Difficulty

Book:Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms

Source: Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms

“It cannot but be injurious to the human mind never to be called into effort: the habit of receiving pleasure without any exertion of thought, by the mere excitement of curiosity, and sensibility, may be justly ranked among the worst effects of habitual novel-reading.”

Mind Humans May Reading Pleasure Effort Novel Worst Effects Habit Mere Curiosity Excitement Human Mind Receiving Sensibility Habitual Exertion

Book:The works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Source: The works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”

Source: Jane Austen: 8 Books in 1

“I'm not interested in making a diagnostic novel or a concern. I'm 100 percent committed in fiction to the pleasure principle - that's what fiction is, and should be.”

Should Pleasure Fiction Principles Novel Percent Concern Committed Not Interested

Author:Martin Amis

“Jonathan Coe's genial, likeable novel can only be described as a kind of lit-prog-rock concept album... Coe recreates the period with such loving accuracy that I frankly suspect him of having planted a secret microphone in the tin Oxford Mathematical Instruments box I carried around in my school days... As always with Jonathan Coe, the sheer intelligent good nature that suffuses his work makes it a pleasure to read.”

“A form wherein we can enjoy simultaneously what is best in both the novel and the short story form. My plan was to create a book that affords readers some of the novel's long-form pleasures but that also contains the short story's ability to capture what is so difficult about being human - the brevity of our moments, their cruel irrevocability.”

Humans Long Book Moments Stories Form Enjoy Difficult Ability Pleasure Novel Plans Reader Capture Short Story Being Human Brevity

Author:Junot Diaz

“Usually at the end of each story we're thrown clear out of the story's world and then we're given a new world to enter. What's unique about a linked collection is that it can deliver both sets of narrative pleasures - the novel's long immersion into character-world and the story anthology's energetic (and mortal) brevity - the linked collection is unique in its ability to be both abrupt and longitudinal simultaneously.”

World Long Ends Character Stories Given Ability Pleasure Novel Clear Unique Mortals Narrative Collections Thrown New World Linked Energetic Brevity Anthology Immersion

Author:Junot Diaz

“Once I had started, I discovered the secret pleasure of writing a novel. It's such an immersive, deep commitment. With short stories, you're continually having to start again from scratch, but with a novel you only need one good idea every few years.”

Needs Writing Years Ideas Stories Pleasure Secret Novel Commitment Short Story Good Ideas Scratches

Author:Debra Dean