Famous Quotes & Sayings

Richard Flanagan

After writing a novel, what is there to say? If a novelist could say it in a maxim, they wouldn't need 120,000 words, several years and sundry characters, plots and subplots, and so on. I'd much rather listen always.

Anthony Burgess

A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although. . . he may be permitted to be an intellectual.

Simon Mawer

Sometimes I think that novelists suffer from P.C.S.: Perpetual Childhood Syndrome.

Alice McDermott

Publishing a short story can sometimes feel like shouting into the dark... your words come out, and then nothing... but I don't think that's why I tend to write novels rather than stories.

Edmund White

A straight writer can write a gay novel and not worry about it, and a gay novelist can write about straight people.

Novelists can ask - they can ask for anything - but their books are their answers in advance.

Each and every novel is a world outside the world - for a reader to visit, for comfort, consolation, escape, or challenge.

There's more to 'The Wizard of Oz' than just one movie. It's not just novelty cutesy things.

Michel Faber

All my novels are about people who strive to heal and evolve.

Michael A. Stackpole

Authors can easily produce ebook versions of novels and shorter work which publishers don't own.

P. G. Wodehouse

No novelists any good except me. Sovietski -- yah! Nastikoff -- bah! I spit me of zem all. No novelists anywhere any good except me. P. G. Wodehouse and Tolstoi not bad. Not good, but not bad. No novelists any good except me.

Ovid

Novelty in all things is charming.

Nelson DeMille

Lawrence Kelter is an exciting new novelist, who reminds me of an early Robert Ludlum.

Honore de Balzac

Novelty is both delightful and deceptive.

Graphic novels are such a visually creative world - it's really interesting what they can do in one sketch. Now I'm hooked.

Jessica Savitch

Being a novelty had its advantages.

Michael Crichton

Good novels are not written, they're rewritten!

Eva Zeisel

Novelty is a concept of commerce, not an aesthetic concept.

George McGovern

I never even had the time to read novels.

Friedrich Nietzsche

As soon as we are shown the existence of something old in a new thing, we are pacified.

George Bernard Shaw

It is clear that a novel cannot be too bad to be worth publishing. . . . It certainly is possible for a novel to be too good to be worth publishing.

Ruth Glick

I didn't know anything about romance novels until a friend suggested that I try writing one. After I read a few, I realized that my favorite part of fiction had always been the relationship aspect.

Jeff Bezos

I'm skeptical that the novel will be 're-invented.'

George Sand

Travelling is like a novel: it's what happens that counts.

Sidney Poitier

I don't very often read novels.

May Sarton

I suppose I have written novels to find out what I thought about something and poems to find out what I felt about something.

Philip Larkin

If you tell a novelist, 'Life's not like that', he has to do something about it. The poet simply replies, 'No, but I am.'

Nicolaus Copernicus

The scorn which I had reason to fear on account of the novelty and unconventionality of my opinion almost induced me to abandon completely the work which I had undertaken. . . . Astronomy is written for astronomers. To them my work too will seem, unless I am mistaken, to make some contribution.

Mason Cooley

The novelty we want is always close to the familiar.

Nicolas Chamfort

Change, change,--we all covet change.

Mohsin Hamid

Only in novels can we take another human being into our head and create something jointly.

George Bernard Shaw

It is the sexless novel that should be distinguished: the sex novel is now normal.

Mark Pellegrino

Not to disparage anything, but most vampire stories tend to be romance novels that are 'Twilight'-ish with metrosexual guys.