Best novel & theme Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“The most difficult part of any crime novel is the plotting. It all begins simply enough, but soon you're dealing with a multitude of linked characters, strands, themes and red herrings - and you need to try to control these unruly elements and weave them into a pattern.”

Needs Trying Enough Character Difficult Novel Crime Elements Red Patterns Theme Multitudes Linked Strands Unruly Herring Crime Novels Red Herrings

Author:Ian Rankin

“Somehow, women's romance novels are not titled He Stopped When I Said "No". They are, though, titled Sweet Savage Love, in which the woman rejects the hand of her gentler lover who saves her from the rapist and marries the man who repeatedly and savagely rapes her. It is this "marry the rapist" theme that not only turned Sweet Savage Love into a best-seller but also into one of women's most enduring romance novels.”

Men Said Hands Romance Novel He Man Sweet Lovers Endure Theme Rejects Savages Romance Novel Sellers Best Sellers

Author:Warren Farrell

“I haven't written a novel or something that long, because I really am improvising all along and the story is growing new limbs to do what it needs to do. So there's very little planning. There's a little planning where I say, "Well, it looks like I'm going in this direction, ok, good." But there's very little forethought or intellectual justification: "Oh, look, I'm putting in a theme park because that represents dystopian America!"”

Needs Wells Looks Littles Long Stories America Novel Growing Written Havens Intellectual Planning Parks Theme Justification Dystopian Limbs Improvising Forethought Theme Parks

Author:George Saunders

“I think that books for young people should have serious and important themes, they shouldn't be trivial. So the books I write, they would be the kind of stories you would write in an adult novel only they just happen to feature a child at the center of them.”

People Thinking Should Writing Kind Children Important Book Stories Happens Would Be Young Novel Serious Adults Should Have Features Theme

Author:John Boyne

“Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don't then worry about plot or themes. These things will come in almost automatically because the characters are now pulling the story.”

Knows Character Stories Worry Novel Theme Plot Pulling

Author:Chinua Achebe

“Introduce your main characters and themes in the first third of your novel. If you are writing a plot-driven genre novel make sure all your major themes/plot elements are introduced in the first third, which you can call the introduction. Develop your themes and characters in your second third, the development. Resolve your themes, mysteries and so on in the final third, the resolution.”

Ifs Writing Firsts Character Novel Mystery Development Elements Majors Thirds Finals Driven Genre Theme Plot Resolve Resolution Introducing Introduction Main Characters

Author:Michael Moorcock

“A good novel is an indivisible sum; every scene, sequence and passage of a good novel has to involve, contribute to and advance all three of its major attributes: theme, plot, characterization.”

Three Novel Scene Majors Theme Plot Passages Attributes Sequence Indivisible Characterization

Book:The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z

Source: The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z

“My major preoccupation is the question, 'What is reality ?' Many of my stories and novels deal with psychotic states or drug-induced states by which I can present the concept of a multiverse rather than a universe. Music and sociology are themes in my novels, also radical political trends; in particular I've written about fascism and my fear of it.”

I Can States Stories Reality Political Universe Deals Novel Written Particular Drug Majors Concepts Radical Theme Trends Fascism Sociology Preoccupation Psychotic Multiverse

Author:Philip K. Dick

“As well as Japanese animation, technology has a huge influence on Japanese society, and also Japanese novels. It's because before, people tended to think that ideology or religion were the things that actually changed people, but it's been proven that that's not the case. Technology has been proven to be the thing that's actually changing people. So in that sense, it's become a theme in Japanese culture.”

People Thinking Wells Has Beens Culture Cases Technology Novel Influence Changed Huge Ideology Theme Proven Animation Japanese Culture Japanese Animation

Author:Mamoru Oshii

“I began to write fiction on the assumption that the true enemies of the novel were plot, character, setting and theme, and having once abandoned these familiar ways of thinking about fiction, totality of vision or structure was really all that remained.”

Source: A John Hawkes symposium: design and debris

“Our life is a book that writes itself and whose principal themes sometimes escape us. We are like characters in a novel who do not always understand what the author wants of them.”

Want Writing Book Sometimes Character Life Is Novel Our Lives Theme Principal

Book:Diary, 1928-1957

Source: Diary, 1928-1957

“The Mapuche are our indigenous people from the south, the Patagonia. They are a vey wise and luminous ancient cavitation, which is completely opposite to where Nazism was headed. In the novel [Wakolda], the theme of racial purity and the Nazi obsession with it was much more developed.”

People Novel Wise Opposites South Ancient Obsession Purity Theme Nazi Indigenous Luminous Nazism Indigenous People Patagonia

Author:Lucia Puenzo

“If you're a novelist, you have sort of themes that run throughout novels. You start a novel and you finish a novel. With record-making in the singer-songwriter world or whatever it is that I do, it's a little different because there is no specific arc that is necessarily, like it's not a concept record.”

Ifs World Littles Different Running Novel Records Concepts Singers Novelists Theme Songwriters Singer Songwriters Arcs

Author:Amos Lee

“The great European novel started out as entertainment, and every true novelist is nostalgic for it. In fact, the themes of those great entertainments are terribly serious-think of Cervantes!”

Thinking Facts Novel Serious Entertainment Novelists Theme Nostalgic Very True

Author:Milan Kundera

“They say great themes make great novels”

Novel Theme Great Novels

Book:An artist is his own fault

Source: An artist is his own fault

“When I look back over my novels what I find is that when I think I'm finished with a theme, I'm generally not. And usually themes will recur from novel to novel in odd, new guises.”

Thinking Looks Novel Finished Odd Theme Guise

Author:Richard Russo

“What I find interesting and heartening, though, is that there does seem to be a shift in the subject matter being written about by women that is doing well in the culture. We're seeing more women writing dystopian fiction, more women writing novels set post-apocalyptic settings, subjects and themes that used to be dominated by men.”

“I'm not conscious of my own themes as I write first drafts, no, and in fact, I work hard to stay in that unconscious space and not ask myself what the novel is about or what my metaphors might mean because then, I think, you're just dead in the water.”

Thinking Writing Firsts Mean Hard Facts Might Asks Water My Own Space Novel Hard Work Conscious Metaphor Theme Unconscious

Author:Laurie Foos

“California seemed to me to be all about secrets and the need for safety. And this leads to this thematic messiness I'm still trying to figure out what to do with. I mean, when it comes to the themes, this is nothing like an Atwood novel.”

Needs Trying Mean Stills Secret Novel Figures Safety California Theme Thematic Messiness

Author:Edan Lepucki

“With my students, I don't offer any simple tips like that, maybe because my own process is pretty messy, but when we workshop we talk a lot about the deeper subject, which is what the story or novel is about. I think defining a narrative's themes can lay bare a narrative's tensions.”

Thinking Stories Process My Own Simple Novel Subjects Students Offers Lays Deeper Narrative Tension Theme Defining Messy Workshops

Author:Edan Lepucki

“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.”

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Novel Quotes