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Novel Quotes

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Novel Quotes

“Character is character and voice is voice, which translates nicely from writing novels to writing TV. But the process is different. You have a writer's room, people pitch you jokes and you collaborate.”

People Writing Different Character Process Voice Rooms Novel Tvs Jokes Translate

Author:Jennifer Weiner

“Look at it this way: if you write the novel of 'Cold Mountain,' it costs exactly the same to produce and market as a novel set in a room. If you make the film, the disparity of costs is huge.”

Ifs Way Writing Looks Film Rooms Novel Produce Huge Cold Cost Mountain Disparity Cold Mountain

Author:Anthony Minghella

“I'm not particularly inventive. If you left me in а room and told me to write a novel, I wouldn't be able to do it. But if you gave me two years in a public library around the corner, I could. It all comes from sort of mixing the true and the invented. I'm not a fabulist. I'm more of a reporter.”

Ifs Writing Years Two Able Left Rooms Novel Library Corners Two Years Reporters Mixing Around The Corner Public Library You Left Me

Author:Elizabeth Gilbert

“I began to write short pieces when I was living in a room too small to write a novel in.”

Writing Rooms Novel Pieces

Author:Angela Cartwright

“Mathematics may be the only exception in the sciences that leaves no room for skepicism. But, if mathematical results are exact as no empirical law can ever be, philosophers have discovered that they are not absolutely novel - instead, they are tautological.”

Ifs May Law Rooms Results Novel Mathematics Philosopher Mathematical Exception

Author:Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza

“Writing, and especially writing a novel, where you get to sit in a room by yourself with either a pen and a paper or a computer for a couple of years, is a very solitary occupation. You can read sales figures - a hundred thousand books sold, half a million books sold - but they are just numbers.”

Writing Years Book Rooms Numbers Half Millions Novel Figures Couple Thousand Paper Computer Hundred Pens Occupation Solitary

Author:Neil Gaiman

“I still find it absurdly difficult to concentrate on a novel if there's a phone or computer to hand; I have taken to locking them outside the room like noisy pets.”

Ifs Stills Hands Difficult Rooms Novel Taken Computer Phones Pet Noisy

Author:David Nicholls

“I was not exploiting any real individual's story in writing ROOM, of course I was aware that my novel, by commenting on such situations, would run the risk of falling into those traps of voyeurism, sensationalism and sentimentality.”

Writing Real Stories Running Fall Courses Individual Rooms Situation Novel Risk Traps Sentimentality Sensationalism

Author:Emma Donoghue

“I was highly aware, in writing [the book] ROOM, that there are unsavoury aspects to our interest in such cases, and I thought it was rather honester to include discussion of media representation in the novel itself than to cling to the high moral ground by merely avoiding scenes of voyeurism, for instance.”

Writing Book Interest Rooms Moral Cases Novel Media Scene Aspect Instance Discussion Representation Avoiding

Author:Emma Donoghue

“Seriously, I think what all the puzzling over parenthood I had to do to write [a novel] ROOM taught me is that children can thrive in a remarkable range of situations.”

Thinking Writing Children Rooms Situation Novel Taught Range Thrive Remarkable Parenthood Puzzling

Author:Emma Donoghue

“You can get rid of the column. It's a little like staying at a hotel; you get used to the shape of the room, and then you're gone. With a novel you move into town and stay for a long time. That's both comforting and terrifying.”

Littles Long Moving Used Rooms Novel Gone Shapes Long Time Towns Hotel Staying Comforting Columns

Author:Anna Quindlen

“In a novella, a whole lot of crap can happen, and you can build momentum and suspense and leave room for a surprise or three. Stories are cut down to the most essential elements, and novels (this might be an unfair generalization on my part) are big fat clumsy efforts where the reader can snooze for a couple chapters and miss nothing of consequence. Hence my love for the middle way.”

“I wrote the novel [Room], and then I thought, "This could work on film, and I want to be the one to do it." So I went ahead and drafted it.”

Want Film Rooms Novel

Author:Emma Donoghue

“If you take a big epic novel and you shoot it, when you get to the editing room you notice that it has 2 million climaxes, which fill the whole 90 or 100 minutes. Then you realize you can't cut them out because if somebody is dying and you cut that out it seems like they just disappear from the film.”

Ifs Whole Bigs Seems Film Realizing Rooms Millions Novel Cutting Minutes Dying Disappear Epic Editing Climax

Author:Pirjo Honkasalo

“I have a very strong sense of architecture in my novels. But at first it's sometimes like building a doorknob before you have a door, and a door before you have a room.”

Firsts Sometimes Strong Rooms Novel Doors Building Architecture Very Strong

Author:Nicole Krauss

“When I went to the University of Iowa in order to be a writer, I thought, This is the worst way to learn how to write. To sit in a room with a bunch of would-be writers, who want to write the Great American Novel, every one of them, and you read their stories and they read yours, and you're not living a life. I don't like that. I like learning on the job. The character of my work has definitely evolved from the character of my life.”

Way Want Writing Character Stories Would Be Jobs Order Rooms Novel Worst University Bunch Great American Iowa

Author:Joe Frank

“It's very hard to be a screenwriter. I remember getting a couple of awards. I got a PEN West award a million years ago when I did Running on Empty, and I sat in the room with all these writers. They wrote everything from novels to non-fiction to children's books to journalism - any kind of writing - and I realized that there was no one in the room who would ever read anything I'd written.”

“I have a library room with four desks in it. On one of them is a spec, on one of them is a present work, on one of them is reading for a future work, on another desk is a novel I'm not doing until I'm a hundred and fifty, and things like that. But, contractually speaking, you just do one at a time when it's on and paid and live. You do your real day on one project and the rest is just literary life. Or intrusions.”

Real Reading Rooms Novel Four Projects Hundred Paid Library Fifty Desks Intrusion Specs Future Work

Author:William Monahan

“When I was writing my first novel, I smoked cigarettes. And when I think about what it was like to smoke, I remember exactly the feeling of sitting in front of my big old computer in that little room where I wrote my first novel.”

Thinking Writing Firsts Littles Feelings Bigs Remember Rooms Novel Fronts Computer Sitting Smoke Cigarette

Author:Dani Shapiro

“We do seem, as a culture, to fetishize the "sweep." But I know there's room for "big" short, fierce novels, and "big" solid ones.”

Knows Bigs Seems Culture Rooms Novel Fierce

Author:Meg Wolitzer

“In terms of the economics, yes obviously the rise of e-books and how people choose to read books has a big effect on the economics of the game. But whether people are buying them on paper or downloading them there's still some poor wretch in a room who is trying to write a poem, write a story, write a novel. And so my job doesn't change. It's just how people receive it and economic conditions on the ground change, but that doesn't affect what I write.”

People Writing Trying Stills Book Stories Bigs Jobs Games Term Poor Rooms Novel Economic Conditions Effects Paper Economics Buying

Author:Colson Whitehead

“I've been asked if I'd consider doing Ropes as a straight novel - which is flattering, I suppose - but I can't imagine why I'd want to limit myself that way. There's a certain immediacy we gain from that specific image of Fred being struck by a revelation, of those union workers appearing from the shadows in an alley, of a lonely woman wondering for just a moment if she should make a pass at this young man in her hotel room”