Best novel & writing Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 12

“Your characters are always your children. And while you are writing, you're keeping them safe. Now they're ready to go into the world and it's sad. I'm happy with the way the novel came out but all the characters' ending really saddened me.”

World Way Writing Children Character Novel Ready Safe Our Children Your Children Saddened Really Sad

Author:Yiyun Li

“I came into screenwriting from an odd direction, because the first screenplay that I read was and is better as writing than the top one percent of literary novels.”

Writing Firsts Novel Percent Odd Screenplays Screenwriting

Author:William Monahan

“In '94, I started writing a novel about an enormous terrorist act that destroyed the United States. The novel takes place twenty years after this destruction, with all the stuff that we're dealing with now - a dirty war, the disappeared, the concept of terrorism. Anyway, 9/11 happened some years into the process, and I was like, OK, I don't have a novel.”

Writing Years War States Stuff Process United United States Novel Happened Concepts Destruction Twenties Terrorism Terrorist Enormous Destroyed Dirty

Author:Junot Diaz

“With a novel, you have to have a story. It's much more important to have it matter to the reader what happens to people, and it has to make sense and end in a way that is satisfying. So I spend a lot more time thinking about that. Then the writing itself usually is easier for me, because I know where it's going.”

People Thinking Knows Way Writing Important Ends Matter Stories Happens Novel Reader Easier Make Sense More Time Satisfying

Author:Dave Barry

“Utopian fiction is really boring. I had to read a lot of it, and it's not that much fun. But they're fascinating to me as historical documents. Cabet [Icaria's founder and author of the utopian novel, Travels in Icaria], is writing in the 1830s, and his idea of the perfect society reveals a lot about his time. But his book is uniquely bad.”

Writing Book Ideas Fun Perfect Fiction Novel Historical Boring Fascinating Founders Documents Utopian Perfect Society

Author:Christine Jennings

“Elena Ferrante is the author of several novels. There is nothing mysterious about her, given how she manifests herself - perhaps even too much - in her own writing, the place where her creative life transpires in absolute fullness.”

Writing Given Novel Creative Too Much Absolutes Mysterious Fullness Creative Life

Book:Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey

Source: Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey

“You sing about the things you're influenced by. So we've been big into sci-fi since we were kids, things like Star Trek etc. Then came movies like Terminator and Dune. Burton is also a really big reader and loves sci-fi novels which helps him write. It's also really cool he does that because it's through the perspective of how we see things going or possibly going.”

Writing Doe Helping Bigs Kids Stars Novel Perspective Reader And Love Etc Sci Fi Really Cool

Author:Dino Cazares

“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

“Mann was profoundly influenced by two philosophers, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, who returned to the most ancient of all philosophical questions - "How to live?" - and whose writings offered novel perspectives for considering that question (much more perspective-offering than rigorous argument!)”

Writing Two Novel Perspective Argument Philosophical Ancient Philosopher Offering Considering Philosophical Questions

Author:Philip Kitcher

“In the end I write the novels I need to write when I need to write them.”

Needs Writing Ends Novel

Author:Steve Erickson

“I'm my own "ideal reader" in the sense that I write novels that I would want to read.”

Want Writing My Own Novel Reader Ideals

Author:Steve Erickson

“I can write three novels in the time it takes to write one novella. I'm probably not going to go with that form again.”

Writing I Can Form Three Novel

Author:Nathan Lowell

“I try not to write more than two or three, I try to just write one if possible, I write till the end at least a draft of a play or a novel; but sometimes, I'll take a break for a couple weeks for a project that is paying me money like a television project which I try to stay away from just to stay financially ahead of the game.”

Ifs Writing Trying Two Ends Sometimes Play Three Games Break Novel Week Television Couple Projects Till The End Ahead Of The Game

Author:Adam Rapp

“Writing is my number one passion. I've written two novels. I've written a screenplay. I also write short stories and poetry.”

Writing Two Stories Passion Numbers Novel Written Short Story Screenplays

Author:Evangeline Lilly

“I've translated two of Bae's novels, A Greater Music and Recitation, which are coming from Open Letter and Deep Vellum in October and January respectively. A Greater Music is a semi-autobiographical book centred on a Korean writer moving to Berlin, learning to live and even write in a foreign language.”

Writing Two Book Moving Language Novel Greater Music Is Letters Berlin October Korean January Foreign Language Recitation Bae

Author:Deborah Smith

“I'm not trying to write cinematic novels, but I have been told several times that my style is cinematic.”

Writing Trying Has Beens Novel Style Cinematic

Author:Nicholas Royle

“I never thought I would write an autobiography, probably because my first novel, Go Now, is really all drawn from my life, even though it's more about the psychology going on.”

Writing Firsts Novel Psychology Autobiography

Author:Richard Hell

“I kept going back while I was writing the novel - which never sold, may it rest in peace - and by the time it was finished I had too many connections to Haiti to walk away.”

Writing May Walks Novel Connections Finished Haiti Rest In Peace

Author:Ben Fountain

“In my head, the 5 issues of A Spoon Too Short comprise one novel: a 100 page graphic novel sequel to Douglas' two Dirk books, taking some of the ideas he was working on before he died, and a whole bunch of new stuff from me and a little from Max Landis (who is the Executive Producer on the book as well as writing the forthcoming TV series).”

“At the end of the day you do have to write a short novel beforehand, called a script, before you can make a movie.”

Writing Ends Novel Scripts The End Of The Day

Author:Louis Garrel

“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

“My boyfriend suggested I write two pages a day. He wouldn't take me out if I hadn't done my two pages. That's how I wrote my second novel.”

Ifs Writing Two Done Novel Pages Take Me My Boyfriend

Author:S. E. Hinton

“It's important to write a mystery novel where the takeaway is not a giveaway - where something could be read over and over.”

Writing Important Novel Mystery Mystery Novels Takeaways

Author:Jimenez Lai

“I had all these sparkles I'd collected and wanted to work in, but when I originally started writing it and it was originally this novel about all these people set in 1666, what I was so interested in was the New Science.”

People Writing Wanted Novel Sparkle

Author:Danielle Dutton

“Sophie [Kinsella]'s writing just captivated me. We bought this eight years ago, before it became an international success and was only one book. Now there's five. So, we were very fortunate to latch onto a character who has since become an international success both as a novel and hopefully now as a movie.”

Writing Years Book Character Novel Five Years Ago International Eight Hopefully Fortunate Sophie Captivated Latches

Author:Jerry Bruckheimer

“I was once doing a question and answer period with the novelist Jane Smiley in a bookstore and someone asked us what our processes were and Jane said hers and then I said mine and Jane said, "Well, if I had a student like that I'd force him never to write like that again because you could never write a novel in the way that you write poetry."”

Ifs Way Writing Wells Said Force Process Answers Novel Students Mines Periods Novelists Jane Bookstores Questions And Answers Smiley

Author:Edward Hirsch

“By the time I was doing "Kill Bill," it was so much filled with prose that, you know, I start seeing why people write a screenplay and make it more like a blueprint, because basically I had written - in "Kill Bill," I had basically written a novel, and basically every day I was adapting my novel to the screen on the fly, you know, on my feet.”

People Knows Writing Novel Written Seeing Feet Bills Filled Screens Prose Screenplays Blueprints Adapting Kill Bill

Author:Quentin Tarantino

“For children: I'm writing a picture book about the Big Dipper and a novel about a cricket, a firefly and a vole. For grownups: I'm writing poems.”

Writing Children Book Bigs Novel Cricket Picture Books Grownups Firefly Writing Poems

Author:Kate DiCamillo

“Wrote my first "novel" when I was six. Studied a bit in college, but then pursued history... But when I started writing professionally, it was mostly learn as you go.”

Writing Firsts Bits Novel College Six Pursued

Author:David B. Coe

“The reality that we were growing up in was very young and vibrant, and nobody was capturing that part of India. I started to backpack after getting out of college. I hiked and did a lot of things nobody was capturing in art at all in India, so I wrote my first novel. It was a very, trippy, experience-filled novel, and it ended up doing very well in India because nobody was writing about that at that point.”

Writing Firsts Wells Art Reality Young Novel Growing Up Growing College India Filled Trippy

Author:Karan Bajaj

“I wanted to write something that was very entertaining to read. The hardest part of this novel [The Yoga of Max's Discontent] was how to make a deeply spiritual transformation journey page-turning and adventurous. That was the hardest part to crack for me.”

Writing Wanted Spiritual Novel Journey Pages Yoga Transformation Hardest Cracks Entertaining Adventurous Discontent Max Spiritual Transformation Pages Turning

Author:Karan Bajaj

“Always remember, there's no point trying to be faithful to the book because film and writing are just two completely different things. Any film stands on its own, apart from whether it's based on a novel.”

Writing Trying Two Book Different Remember Film Novel Faithful Different Things No Point Being Faithful

Author:William S. Burroughs

“I've never taken any classes or had formal training in writing novels. At its most basic, I learned how to structure a novel.”

Writing Class Novel Taken Training Structure Formal

Author:Dennis Green

“I can't stand it when people say, "If you're writing a novel, you should read this and that." Because it's like giving someone another person's prescription. How do you know that's what they need?”

People Ifs Knows Needs Giving Should Writing Persons I Can Novel Do You Know Prescriptions

Author:Sandra Cisneros

“I don't think I will write anything that could be even remotely considered a genre novel from this point on. I think I've graduated.”

Thinking Writing Novel Genre

Author:James Ellroy

“When I write a novel I start each morning by reading for 20 minutes.”

Writing Reading Morning Novel Minutes

Author:Richard Ford

“Writing a good query letter has very little to do with writing a good novel. But if you can't write the one, it makes it really hard to get the other published.”

Ifs Writing Littles Hard Novel Letters Queries

Author:Patrick Rothfuss

“If ideas are what feed serious literature and arresting language, who today is writing a novel of ideas (which can often mean comedy)? I think of Joshua Cohen. Who else?”

Ifs Thinking Writing Mean Ideas Today Literature Language Novel Comedy Serious Arresting

Author:Cynthia Ozick

“It's true that the young who now flock to script writing, or producing and directing, to fulfill the demands of these new devices would, in an earlier period, have been submitting to magazines and working on their first novels. But even in the midst of all these "digital products," the wonder of it is that there are still so many young writers who continue to believe in the venerable print novel as the corridor to fame and fortune.”

Writing Firsts Believe Has Beens Stills Young Wonder Novel Products Periods Fame Demand Fortune Scripts Magazines Digital Midst Devices Print Flocks Corridors Young Writers

Author:Cynthia Ozick

“You're looking for something, I don't know what I'm looking for, but I'm looking. Writing is a lot about that. When you write a poem. When you write a novel.”

Knows Writing Novel

Author:Alejandro Zambra

“I think one of the good things about writing novels is that you always start from scratch.”

Thinking Writing Novel Good Things Scratches

Author:Maria Semple

“If someone said, I want to translate your novel into Igbo, I would say, Go ahead. But when I write in the Igbo language, I write my own dialect. I write some poetry in that dialect.”

Ifs Want Writing Said Language My Own Novel Translate Dialect

Author:Chinua Achebe

“When I was fifteen I wrote seven hundred pages of an incredibly bad novel - it's a very funny book I still like a lot. Then, when I was nineteen I wrote a couple hundred pages of another novel, which wasn't very good either. I was still determined to be a writer. And since I was a writer, and here I was twenty-nine years old and I wasn't a very good poet and I wasn't a very good novelist, I thought I would try writing a play, which seems to have worked out a little better.”

Writing Trying Years Littles Stills Book Play Seems Novel Poet Couple Pages Hundred Twenties Seven Very Good Determined Nine Novelists Fifteen Nine Years Nineteen Funny Book

Book:Conversations with Edward Albee

Source: Conversations with Edward Albee

“I hate the term "mystery". That's not what I write. I think the Scarpetta novels are much more character-driven than an average puzzle solver. Writing should be like a pane of glass - there's another world on the other side and your vision carries you there, but you're not aware of having passed through a barrier to get there.”

Thinking World Should Writing Character Hate Sides Term Vision Novel Mystery I Hate Average Glasses Driven Barriers Carrie Puzzles Another World

Author:Patricia Cornwell

“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

“For each of my novels, I've had something of a eureka moment of deciding what world I want to set it in - Wall Street, the pop-music industry, Harvard - and what the very vague contours of the narrative might be (which typically get changed a lot through the writing process).”

World Want Writing Moments Might Process Novel Streets Changed Wall Industry Pops Narrative Vague Writing Process Harvard Pop Music Music Industry

Author:Teddy Wayne

“I'm a very old-fashioned novelist. I write 19th-century novels, where a lot of rules apply.”

Writing Novel Century Novelists Old Fashioned 19th Century

Author:John Irving

“I couldn't sit down and write a novel or a short story - even now - because of my dyslexia. But I learned narration through movies.”

Writing Stories Novel Down And Short Story Narration Dyslexia

Author:Robert Benton

“When I am writing a novel I try not to read great prose stylists into which I will fall.”

Writing Trying Fall Novel Prose Stylist

Author:Frederick Busch

“I wanted to be a writer, but the idea of writing novels or movies seemed really intimidating. I never got more than a few pages into one.”

Writing Ideas Wanted Novel Pages Intimidating

Author:Kurt Busiek

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