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Novel Quotes

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Novel Quotes

“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 possibility of the impossible, dreams and illusions, are the subject of my novels.”

Dream Novel Impossible Subjects Possibility Illusion Impossible Dream

Author:Jose Saramago

“Sci-Fi is the genre that explored both possibilities: the end of our existential crisis and the end of our existence. My novel, The 5th Wave, explores the latter scenario, because, frankly, I believe it represents the likeliest outcome of an extraterrestrial encounter. In short, if they're out there, we better hope they never find us.”

Ifs Believe Ends I Believe Existence Novel Possibility Crisis Wave Genre Outcomes Encounters Latter Sci Fi Existential Scenarios Existential Crisis Extraterrestrial 5th Wave

Author:Rick Yancey

“Reading Tomato Red-the first Daniel Woodrell novel I came upon-was a transformative experience. It expanded my sense of the possibilities not only of crime fiction, but of fiction itself-of language, of storytelling. Time and again, his work just dazzles and humbles me. God bless Busted Flush for these glorious reissues. It's a service to readers everywhere, and a great gift.”

Firsts Reading Language Fiction Novel Crime Possibility Reader Red Storytelling Glorious Bless God Bless Crime Fiction Tomatoes Great Gifts Dazzle Busted

Author:Megan Abbott

“Irving Wallace wrote a bestselling novel, The Man, in the 1960s about a black man becoming president of the United States. We thought that such a possibility was thousands of years in the future. Some people may still have some difficulty with the idea, but that's a major cultural meme shift.”

People Men Years May Stills Ideas States Black President United United States Novel Possibility He Man Becoming Majors Difficulty 1960s Memes Becoming President

Author:Wayne Dyer

“One can't found a novel theology on Nothing, and nothing is so secure a foundation as a contradiction. Look at the great successes of the past--they say their deities are the masters of all the universes, and yet that they require grandmothers to defend them, as if they were children frightened by poultry. Or that the authority that punishes no one while there exists a chance for reformation will punish everyone when there is no possibility anyone will become the better for it.”

Source: Shadow & Claw: The First Half of 'The Book of the New Sun'

“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

“The strange thing, though, is that most people who write novels these days seem to be aware of only a fraction of its possibilities. Kundera goes on and on about this, and I never tire of reading him on the subject, because I agree very deeply with it.”

People Writing Seems Reading Novel Subjects Possibility Strange Goes On Agree These Days Tire Fractions Strange Things Very Deep

Author:Teju Cole

“At the emergence of the modern novel with Rabelais and Cervantes, all kinds of things were possible in a long-form prose work. Within a couple of hundred years, most of those possibilities were abandoned in favor of a text that efficiently transmitted sentiments.”

Years Kind Long Form Novel Modern Possibility Couple Hundred Favors All Kinds Prose Sentiments Abandoned Emergence Modern Novel

Author:Teju Cole

“Sometime during the 1990s, when I was teaching philosophy at UCSD, my friend, colleague, and music teacher, Carol Plantamura, discussed the possibility of teaching a course together looking at ways in which various literary works (plays, stories, novels) had been treated as operas, and how different themes emerged in the opera and in its original. One of the pairings we planned to use was Mann's great novella and Britten's opera. Unfortunately, the course was never taught, but the idea remained with me.”

“The writer has to take risks and go somewhere full of mystery and possibility for the novel to deepen over the years it takes to write it.”

Writing Years Novel Risk Mystery Possibility

Author:Dana Spiotta

“Of course, both [Oscar] Wilde & [Vladimir] Nabokov believe in many things, and these things emerge in their writing clearly - for Wilde, the folly of humankind and the (romantic) grandeur of the heroic, lone individual (not unlike Wilde himself); for Nabokov, the possibility of a kind of transcendence through a great, prevailing, superior sort of love (especially in Ada, the most self-congratulatory of novels.)”

Writing Believe Kind Self Courses Individual Novel Possibility Superiors Folly Heroic Humankind Oscars Transcendence Grandeur Prevailing Lone Wilde Ada

Author:Joyce Carol Oates

“Voltaire's novel [Candid] offers us parallel universes, the possibility of entering into alternative worlds existing side by side, and this is something quite modern. Nested narratives and parallel universes are popular at the moment in many different art forms.”

World Art Different Moments Form Universe Sides Novel Modern Possibility Offers Alternatives Narrative Entering Parallels Candid Parallel Universe

Author:Mark Ravenhill

“A lot of people have come up after Brookland and asked, "What happens to her at the end of the novel?" and I will very politely say, well, here are the two possibilities.”

People Wells Two Ends Happens Novel Possibility Come Up

Author:Emily Barton