“Novels are routinely denigrated when characters are not found to be likable. Is Raskolnikov likable? Is King Lear? The plethora of such naive readers testifies to a failure of imagination - the capacity to see into unfamiliar lives, motives, feelings - and this failure must, at least in part, be the failure of the teaching of literature in the schools.” CharacterFeelingsSchoolFoundLiteratureImaginationNovelTeachingReaderKingsCapacityMotiveNaiveUnfamiliarLearRaskolnikov Author:Cynthia Ozick
“It's actually not very hard to re-set between the adult novels and the ones for younger readers. The narrative voices are very similar, the smartass attitude, the environmental battles. Kids love books that are irreverent and challenge authority, when authority is arbitrary, greedy or foolish. They also love it when you make fun of grownups, and I've spent my whole life as a writer doing that.” BookHardWholeKidsFunVoiceChallengesAttitudeNovelReaderBattleAuthorityAdultsEnvironmentalWhole LifeFoolishNarrativeGreedyArbitraryGrownupsKids LoveIrreverentSmartassNarrative Voice Author:Carl Hiaasen
“I've heard some readers saying they wished the story was longer, and I completely understand that desire - we all like to sink into a nice, long novel.” LongStoriesDesireNovelNiceHeardReader Author:Theodora Goss
“If you connect emotionally with the plight of those characters, ou feel what they feel and you walk away with a sense of understanding and empathy, and hopefully, something has been illuminated for you. And I tink that's what happendd for a lot of readers with my novels.” IfsFeelsHas BeensCharacterUnderstandingWalksNovelReaderEmpathyHopefullyPlight Author:Khaled Hosseini
“The gift of literature is that, in some lucky cases, reading a novel or a story makes the reader more curious, more open-minded.” StoriesReadingLiteratureCasesNovelReaderLuckyCuriousOpen Minded Author:Amos Oz
“I don't think a novel's main donation, main gift, is the document. The document is there, but a novel goes beyond documentation. It goes into opening a new vista, opening a new perspective, showing familiar things in an unfamiliar way, and making the reader reconsider the documentary facts which he or she may have known before.” ThinkingWayMayFactsKnownNovelPerspectiveReaderFamiliarOpeningDocumentsDocumentariesUnfamiliarDonationVistasDocumentationNew PerspectiveFamiliar Things Author:Amos Oz
“I feel that there is an alternate ending that leaps off too far into fantasy and there is an alternate ending that leaps off too far into pessimism, but that, in fact, the novel as it has developed should, if it's functioning correctly, have equipped you as the reader to make your own decision about where you want to go with that, about where you're going to fall on that continuum. So, the novel is taking you directly up to the point that you have to choose, and it's letting you do that.” IfsWantFeelsShouldFactsFallDecisionFantasyNovelReaderLeapPessimismContinuum Author:Emily Barton
“Because I think of novels as collaborative enterprises between the writer and the reader, all of my novels so far have ending with endings that maybe point in more than one direction, and that seems important to me because it seems important to me that after you've invested twenty or thirty hours of your imaginative life into this narrative that you have some stake in how it ends.” ThinkingImportantEndsSeemsHoursNovelReaderTwentiesNarrativeThirtyEnterpriseStakesImaginativeOne Direction Author:Emily Barton