Best novel & years Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 2

“If it takes you seven years to write each novel, you need a patron. And I would rather have my corporate self as my patron than any arts council or bestower of grants.”

Ifs Needs Writing Years Art Self Novel Seven Corporate Grants Council Seven Years Patron

Author:Mohsin Hamid

“The Lake of Dreams grew gradually, over many years, elements and ideas accruing until they gained enough critical mass to become a novel.”

Years Ideas Enough Dream Novel Grew Elements Mass Critical Lakes Critical Mass

Author:Kim Edwards

“Seven years into writing a novel, I started to lose my mind. My thirty-seventh birthday had just come and gone, the end of 2008 was approaching, and I was constantly aware of how little I had managed to accomplish.”

Writing Years Mind Littles Ends Loses Novel Gone Seven Accomplish Thirty Seven Years Seventh Birthday

Author:Akhil Sharma

“Jeremy Popkin's collection of first-person narratives of the Haitian Revolution is an extremely valuable work, accessible, sound and intelligent. I only wish such a book had been available fifteen years ago when I was in the early stages of researching my series of novels. Popkin has been deft and tactful in stitching together these excerpts, and as a result, he manages to tell a complete version of the Revolution almost entirely in the words of the people who experienced it-this book engaged me deeply.”

“Once in a while - perhaps every 10 years, or even every generation - a novel appears that profoundly questions the way we look at the world, and at ourselves. Beijing Coma is a poetic examination not just of a country at a defining moment in its history, but of the universal right to remember and to hope. It is, in every sense, a landmark work of fiction”

World Way Years Looks Country Moments Remember Fiction Novel Generations Universal Poetic Defining Examination Landmarks Coma Beijing Defining Moments

Author:Tash Aw

“... a novel survives because of its basic truthfulness, its having within it something general and universal, and a quality of imaginative perception which applies just as much now as it did in the fifty or hundred or two hundred years since the novel came to life.”

Years Two Truth Fiction Quality Novel Perception Hundred Universal Fifty Truth Of Life Imaginative Truthfulness

Author:Elizabeth Bowen

“No one of the characters in my novels has originated, so far as I know, in real life. If anything, the contrary was the case: persons playing a part in my life--the first twenty years of it--had about them something semi-fictitious.”

Ifs Knows Years Firsts Persons Real Character Cases Novel Experience Twenties Contrary Real Life

Book:Pictures and conversations

Source: Pictures and conversations

“A year after I'd graduated college, I went to a weeklong conference intensive in Boston, and that's when things kicked into high gear. My workshop leader was a Harvard professor and editor. At the end of the week we met one-on-one over breakfast, and she said, in essence, "Look, you're ready to turn pro." She gave me a list of literary agents to query once I had something to show them. I came home and wrote my first real novel, and the agent that sold it to Tor Books was on that list.”

“I was a serious comic collector and fanboy as a kid. I wanted very badly to draw comic books for a lot of my childhood and early adolescence. So when you have an unfulfilled dream like that, when years later you find yourself in a position to make a graphic novel - hell yeah, I'm going to do that.”

“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

“I don't write the same book over and over - I think if I did that, I would stop writing. I couldn't write a series with the same character, and I couldn't write a romance novel over and over again that takes place at a different beach every year. That's not who I am.”

Ifs Thinking Writing Years Book Different Character Romance Novel Series Who I Am Beach Romance Novel

Author:Jodi Picoult

“With the novels, I usually start from something in my own life that I can't resolve, so I turn it into a metaphor and for months or sometimes years I'll exhaust all of my emotional reaction to this issue by making it enormous on the page.”

Years I Can Sometimes Turns My Own Novel Issues Emotional Months Pages Metaphor Enormous Reactions Resolve My Own Life Emotional Reactions

Author:Chuck Palahniuk

“I didn't have a list of things I should do this year, next year, find a good novel, sign two stars and make a deal - because I think cinema should come from cinema. I never adapted anything. Beautiful books are beautiful books, that's it. I don't know why we should transform them.”

Thinking Knows Should Years Two Book Beautiful Next Stars Deals Novel Lists Cinema Next Year Adapted Beautiful Books

Author:Agnes Varda

“I think my writing process changes as I gain more life experience... It has taken me many years to be able to write a novel that shows the points of view of people of different ages and personalities.”

People Thinking Writing Years Different Shows Age Able Process Views Novel Taken Personality Gains Point Of View Life Experience Writing Process Different Ages

Author:Kathleen Winter

“There's no really other way to learn writing than by writing. So accelerate that as much as you can. The more you write, the better you'll get. What also helps, though, is walking away from broken stuff. Not everything's going to work. Killing two years of your life trying to resuscitate a dying novel, I don't know. Why not just write a different one? You'll have more ideas. You can't help having ideas.”

Knows Way Writing Trying Years Two Ideas Different Helping Stuff Novel Dying Broken Walking Killing Two Years Why Not Going To Work Accelerate Walking Away

Author:Stephen Graham Jones

“The process for writing a picture book is completely different from the process of writing a chapter book or novel. For one thing, most of my picture books rhyme. Also, when I write a picture book I'm always thinking about the role the pictures will play in the telling of the story. It can take me several months to write a picture book, but it takes me several years to write a novel.”

Thinking Writing Years Book Different Play Stories Process Roles Novel One Thing Months Take Me Chapters Rhyme Always Thinking Picture Books

Author:Sarah Weeks

“With a novel, which takes perhaps years to write, the author is not the same man he was at the end of the book as he was at the beginning. It is not only that his characters have developed-he has developed with them, and this nearly always gives a sense of roughness to the work: a novel can seldom have the sense of perfection which you find in Chekhov's story, The Lady with the Dog.”

Men Giving Writing Years Book Ends Character Stories Novel Dog Perfection Insightful Short Story Chekhov Roughness Writing Short Stories

Book:Collected Stories

Source: Collected Stories

“When I began to write seriously, 40 years ago now, my chosen form was the novel.”

Writing Years Form Novel Years Ago Chosen

Author:William Nicholson

“Imagine a world in which no writer has written a literary novel in sixty years. Imagine a place where not a single person has read a book that is truly about the character at its center.”

World Years Persons Book Character Novel Imagine Written Sixty Single Person

Author:Adam Johnson

“In 25 years of writing novels, I've never had anything that felt like writer's block.”

Writing Years Felt Novel Block Writer's Block

Author:Richard Powers

“I have time to write 1-2 novels per year, and get roughly novel-sized ideas every month. I have to perform triage on my own writing impulses.”

Writing Years Ideas My Own Novel Months Impulse Triage

Author:Charles Stross

“The thing I like so much about short stories is that there isn't as much of an investment of time so I'm free to experiment more. If it doesn't work out, I've only lost a week or two of work. If I screw up a novel I've lost at least a year's worth of work. But the nice thing is that those experiments with short stories can be carried over to novels when the experiments do work.”

Ifs Years Two Stories Lost Novel Nice Week Investment Work Out Experiments Short Story Screws Nice Things Screw Ups

Author:Charles de Lint

“"The Diagnosis" is by far my most ambitious book. I such great hopes for it... there was so much I wanted to do with the book. I was extremely insecure about it for several years. Just didn't know whether I would finish the book much less for it to come close to what I intended. I think that for any novel you never know exactly how the book is going to turn out...”

Thinking Knows Years Book Wanted Turns Novel Ambitious Insecure Diagnosis Great Hope

Author:Alan Lightman

“My second novel, "Good Benito", was not finished. I wished that I had spent another year with it.”

Years Novel Finished Another Year

Author:Alan Lightman

“At the beginning of the project, I wasn't certain that I could come up with an engaging storyline and cast of characters in this world, so I had a strong bias toward actually writing, and worrying about research later. In other words, I was afraid that I'd devote a year or two of my life to grinding through Kant and Husserl, then discover that there simply was no novel to be written here.”

World Writing Years Two Character Certain Strong Worry Novel Written This World Projects Research Casts Come Up Bias Engaging Storyline

Author:Neal Stephenson

“Madame Bovary is one my favorite novels. Emma Bovary will always be an enigma, but as the years pass, I feel that I understand her better. She has a violent nostalgia, almost an infantile nostalgia, to be understood by the men surrounding her. I like her relentless fight for independence, her rebellion against the mediocre, and her quest for the sublime, even if she burns her wigs in the process. I like that Flaubert never judges her morally for her self-destructiveness, for her desperate attempt to satisfy her wildest desires and appetites.”

“In the case of my second film The Fish Child (El Niño Pez), I had written the novel about 5 years before I made into a film. In the case of The German Doctor I had published the novel a year before I started writing the script, I even had another project to shoot. But I had this idea of the powerful cinematic language from the novel that I couldn't let go of.”

Writing Years Children Made Ideas Film Language Powerful Cases Novel Written Letting Go Projects Doctors Scripts Fishes Cinematic Pez

Author:Lucia Puenzo

“I can't be reading novels when I'm writing a novel, because somebody's voice creeps in. The hardest thing to do is keep the tone and your attitude over the course of a year or however long it takes.But when I'm writing short stories, which I will be doing shortly, I can read anything I like.”

“Just look at the cinema itself: It's comprised of lots of movies about graphic novels, and if you're not 20 years old and wearing a cape and a mask and white, you're out of business. Today's cinema is a proliferation of comedies, which are in some ways creating caricature images. They're one-dimensional.”

Ifs Way Years Looks Today White Novel Comedy Creating Cinema Mask Graphic Caricatures Proliferation Capes Graphic Novels

Author:Danny Glover

“Baseball is more like a novel than a war. It is like an ongoing, hundred-year work of art, peopled with thousands of characters, full of improbable events, anecdotes, folklore and numbers.”

Years Art War Character Numbers Novel Events Hundred Baseball Works Of Art Ongoing Improbable Folklore Anecdotes

Book:The answer is baseball: a book of questions that illuminate the great game

Source: The answer is baseball: a book of questions that illuminate the great game

“My writing derived from the conviction I conceived during my college years: one should lead one's life as if one were the protagonist of an epic novel, with the outcome predetermined and chapter after chapter of edifying, traumatic, and exhilarating events to be suffered through. Since the end is known in advance, one must try to experience as much as possible in the brief time allotted. Writing is a way of ensuring that you pay enough attention along the way to understand what you see.”

Ifs Way Should Writing Trying Years Ends Enough Pay Attention Known Novel Events College Conviction Outcomes Chapters Epic Exhilarating Protagonists Predetermined Year One College Years

Author:Jeffrey Tayler

“You can't have a novel without real, believable people, and once you get into either too theoretical a novel or too philosophical a novel, you get into the dangers that the French novel has discovered in the past 50 or 60 years. And you get into a sort of aridity. No, you have to have real, identifiable people to whom the reader reacts in a way as if they were real people.”

People Ifs Way Years Real Past Novel Danger Reader Philosophical Theoretical Believable

Author:Julian Barnes

“One of the great things about writing a series is that with each book, the novel is meant to stand alone on its own legs, but also to bring along those loyal readers who become attached to the characters over the years.”

Writing Years Book Character Novel Reader Series Legs Great Things Loyal Stand Alone

Author:Linda Fairstein

“I was born January 6, 1937, eight years after Wall Street crashed and two years before John Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath, his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the plight of a family during the Great Depression.”

Years Two Winning Born Novel Streets Wall Eight Prize Two Years Wrath Grapes January Great Depression Plight Prize Winning

Book:Wins, Losses, and Lessons: An Autobiography

Source: Wins, Losses, and Lessons: An Autobiography

“I really do believe that chance favours a prepared mind. Wallace Stegner, who was one of my teachers when I was at Stanford, preached that writing a novel is not something that can be done in a sprint. That it's a marathon. You have to pace yourself. He himself wrote two pages every day and gave himself a day off at Christmas. His argument was at the end of a year, no matter what, you'd got 700 pages and that there's got to be something worth keeping.”

Writing Years Mind Believe Two Ends Matter Done Chance Novel Teacher Pages Argument No Matter What Prepared Pace Favour Marathon Days Off Sprint Stanford Pace Yourself

Author:Scott Turow

“With novels, you're sitting at a desk, alone, going slightly crazy, for anywhere from six months to a year with zero feedback.”

Years Novel Crazy Months Six Sitting Zero Desks Six Months Feedback

Author:Duane Swierczynski

“Writing novels reminds me of being an awkward 15-year-old typing on a Commodore 64 in his bedroom, trying to be the next Stephen King.”

Writing Trying Years Next Novel Kings Awkward Bedroom Typing

Author:Duane Swierczynski

“I don't categorize myself as an 85-year-old woman who has written an erotic novel. I categorize myself as a writer who's written an erotic novel.”

Years Novel Written Erotic Old Woman

Author:Gloria Vanderbilt

“You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year”

Writing Years Two Stories Hours Novel Short Story

Author:Ray Bradbury

“In the years since The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, Voinovich has sharpened his satire, and Monumental Propaganda is a novel that slashes and rips -- but not on every page. He expands his narrative to accommodate shrewd philosophy and inventive portraiture, a very amusing disquisition on Soviet latrines and a number of outlandish plot developments. In his translation, Andrew Bromfield deftly shifts his tone and tools as required, remaining true to Voinovich's Vonnegut-like playfulness and appreciation of the absurd.”

“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.”

“And yet my, not only my faith, but my experience has led me to believe that the world is not a construction of space and time and matter and energy. That that mapping is insufficient. That the world is instead some kind of a linguistic construct. It is more in the nature of a sentence, or a novel, or a work of art than it is in the nature of these machine models of interlocking law that we inherit out of a thousand years of rational reductionism.”

“I remember [in teenage years] thinking there were a lot of check boxes out there to sort teens into appropriate molds, and they didn't seem to make check boxes for whatever it was that I had grown up into. I definitely explore that a lot in my novels.”

Thinking Years Seems Remember Novel Boxes Checks Appropriate Teens Teenage Mold Teenage Years

Author:Maggie Stiefvater

“The old images seem like a caricature now: the shadowy world of secret rituals, the aging dons behind high-walled estates, the passion for vengeance and power over other men. For years, the Mafia was the stuff of novels and movies and whispers on Mulberry Street.”

Men World Years Seems Passion Stuff Secret Behinds Novel Streets Aging Ritual Estates Vengeance Mafia Caricatures Power Over Others Mulberry

Author:Robert D. McFadden

“I was 29 when I wrote my first novel. But I was 45 when I quit for good. I was a 16-year overnight success.”

Years Firsts Novel Quitting I Quit Overnight Success

Author:Richard North Patterson

“After something crystallizes, I can write ferociously and write novels in six months, which in the past would have taken me two years.”

Writing Years I Can Two Past Novel Taken Months Six Two Years Six Months

Book:Conversations with Paul Auster

Source: Conversations with Paul Auster

“[Mark] Twain is pointing at you. You, the reader of the book one hundred and thirty years ago and today. That is what has made it a great American novel and the most widely read book in American Literature around the world today.”

World Years Made Book Today Literature Novel Reader Hundred Years Ago Mark Made It Around The World Thirty Pointing World Today Thirty Years Great American American Literature

Author:Hal Holbrook

“I can only write one novel at a time. The author of the Perry Mason novels, Erle Stanley Gardner, often worked on four novels simultaneously, and produced a million words a year. I'm envious.”

Writing Years I Can Millions Novel Four Envious Stanley Masons

Author:James Thayer

“I'm trying to break myself of that habit [of not writing out a first draft ] because I'm working on a couple novels and I know if I tried to write those books the way I wrote the stories it would take me years to finish.”

Ifs Knows Way Writing Trying Years Firsts Book Stories Break Novel Couple Habit Take Me

Author:Donald Ray Pollock

“Part of battle has been getting Hollywood to recognize that comic books and superheroes are not synonymous. That's been a huge breakthrough, just in recent years really, and as a result of that recent breakthrough, we've had movies like 300, Road to Perdition, and A History of Violence, that very few people realize were based on comic books and graphic novels. It's very important to make that differentiation.”

People Years Has Beens Important Book Realizing Results Novel Violence Huge Battle Hollywood Comic Comic Book Superhero Breakthrough Graphic Graphic Novels Differentiation Perdition

Author:Michael Uslan

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