Famous Quotes & Sayings

Jane Smiley

Novelists never have to footnote.

Jane Smiley

The main thing about the novel that is totally fascinating: It's not possessed by the writer; it's possessed by the reader.

Ruth Rendell

There are some novelists who can get away with writing about sex - Philip Roth, Ian McEwan - but they are rare.

Edmund White

I didn't get anything published until I was thirty-three, and yet I'd written five novels and six or seven plays. The plays, I should point out, were dreadful.

Bonnie Jo Campbell

Eighty percent of all novels are bought by women, or so I've heard.

Edward Norton

A lot of why I do something is just the novelty of the experience.

For the novels I wrote before selling anything, I didn't outline much. I had a vague idea of the story.

Ian Mcewan

You could say that all novels are spy novels and all novelists are spy masters.

Irish novelist John Banville has a creepy, introverted imagination.

Cory Doctorow

Novels for me are how I find out what's going on in my own head. And so that's a really useful and indeed critical thing to do when you do as many of these other things as I do.

Anne Enright

A novel is written not to be judged, but experienced.

Amos Oz

Almost without exception, my novels are rooted in Israel because that's the place I know well.

Amos Oz

All my novels are rooted in their time and in their place.

Andre Maurois

Novelty, the most potent of all attractions, is also the most perishable.

Donna Leon

I never know what's going to happen in a novel. I don't have a plan or an outline.

Don DeLillo

One connection I see between novelists and terrorists is that we both attempt to alter consciousness.

Don DeLillo

I'm a novelist, period. An American novelist.

Don DeLillo

What terrorists gain, novelists lose.

Curtis Sittenfeld

Personally, I have never wished I were a male novelist.

I wrote my first five horror novels while I was teaching.

Robin Hobb

I actually think that short stories transfer to film much better than novels do.

Alan Furst

Let me put it this way: I don't plan to retire. What would I do, become a brain surgeon? I mean, a brain surgeon can retire and write novels, but a novelist can't retire and do brain surgery - or at least he better not.

Alan Furst

Spy novels are traditionally about lone wolves, but how many people actually live like that?

Ray Bradbury

In Hollywood, they think they know it all. You, as a writer, are essentially an outsider. Novelists and short-story writers, especially.

Eleanor Catton

When I was writing 'The Luminaries,' I read a lot of crime novels because I wanted to figure out which ones made me go, 'Ah! I didn't know that was coming!'

I start with theory rather than people. I don't like novels which have no theoretical or philosophical underpinning. I hate the contemporary novel where people just sit and talk to each other about their relationships.

It'd be impossible to capture the feel of 'All Quiet on the Western Front' in a novel starring Mace Windu; 'All Quiet' is a tragic coming-of-age story.

Jojo Moyes

Rejection is part of the process, so you can't let it crush you. My first three novels never made it into publication, but my fourth, 'Sheltering Rain,' was translated into 11 languages.

Austin Grossman

Writing a novel was completely awesome because parts of it could suck and I could throw them away. I didn't have to know the ending until I got there.

Charles Palliser

To make it interesting and worth doing, writing a novel has to be a leap into the unknown. I have to be unsure if I can write it; otherwise, I won't want to.

Orhan Pamuk

I think novelists should be disciplined and self-imposed working hours. I work a lot, but I don't feel that I'm working. I always feel that there is a child in me, healthy, and I'm playing.

Pearl Cleage

I didn't have a dream of being a press secretary, I had a dream of being a playwright; I had a dream of being a novelist and a poet.

Research is usually a policeman stopping a novel from progressing.