#novels

"Poetry, plays, novels, music, they are the cry of the human spirit trying to understand itself and make sense of our world."

"A novel is never anything but a philosophy expressed in images. And in a good novel the philosophy has disappeared into the images."

"A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film."

"It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the Grand Canyon of Arizona and listens for the echo."

"You don't read Gatsby, I said, to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and fidelity and marriage are. A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil."

"It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language"

"Marriage is a partnership, not a democracy."

"Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system."

"God is going to send you someone that will rescue you. Then one day you will rescue them in return and together your story will rescue others. He has always been a God of rescues and a maker of warrior’s for his grace. You only need to believe that you are part of something greater than you know."

"I read anything that’s going to be interesting. But you don’t know what it is until you’ve read it. Somewhere in a book on the history of false teeth there’ll be the making of a novel."

"Life is painful and disappointing. It is useless, therefore, to write new realistic novels. We generally know where we stand in relation to reality and don’t care to know any more."

"The moon will guide you through the night with her brightness, but she will always dwell in the darkness, in order to be seen."

"Find the things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to let them go."

"All novels are sequels; influence is bliss."

"Sir,’ said Stephen, ‘I read novels with the utmost pertinacity. I look upon them--I look upon good novels--as a very valuable part of literature, conveying more exact and finely-distinguished knowledge of the human heart and mind than almost any other, with greater breadth and depth and fewer constraints."

"If you only write when inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you'll never be a novelist."

"Romance novels are birthday cake and life is often peanut butter and jelly. I think everyone should have lots of delicious romance novels lying around for those times when the peanut butter of life gets stuck to the roof of your mouth."

"Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth."

"It was only after two years' work that it occurred to me that I was a writer. I had no particular expectation that the novel would ever be published, because it was sort of a mess. It was only when I found myself writing things I didn't realise I knew that I said, 'I'm a writer now.' The novel had become an incentive to deeper thinking. That's really what writing is—an intense form of thought."

"No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons."