492 Quotes About Novels

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.

Novels were primarily about relationships. … Their popularity lay in that they belied the loneliness of the people who read them, people essentially hypnotized by the machinations of their own consciousness.

I felt like a woman reading a mystery novel with every fourth line missing. There's really only one thing a person can do when they're hip-deep in a mystery novel: keep reading.

A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished. Marathoners have to carefully pace themselves so that they don't run out of energy (or in the case of the novelist-- ideas) because they have so far to run. To mix the metaphor, writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage.

Your love for something is what comes from above, touches your heart and soothes your soul.

All the wrong things in life will make sense at the write time.

Within the pages of books, I've journeyed to Mandalay, the Milky Way and Santa Fe, without once having to leave my armchair.

Within the pages of books, I've journeyed to Mandalay, the Milky Way and Santa Fe.

She started reading novels to put herself in the way of secret lives.