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Modern Novel Quotes

Many modern novels have a beginning, a muddle and an end.

Many modern novels have a beginning, a muddle and an end.

Philip Larkin
Writing, Modern Novel, Ends
'New Fiction' no. 15, January 1978 (the 'classic formula' for a novel)

I read a lot of detective stories because they always deliver. They give you a beginning, a middle, and an end - a resolution. The modern novels I read don't always deliver because I'm looking essentially for a story. As in Shakespeare, "The play's the thing." In particular I read detective stories for pacing, plot and suspense.

Robert Cormier
Modern Novel, Play, Giving
Source: www.teachingbooks.net

I also read modern novels - I have just had to read 60 as I am one of the judges for the Orange Fiction Prize.

Kate Adie
Modern Novel, Orange, Judging

In modern novels I try to not let myself get away and to be here, and that's why I write about my life and myself. But even when I do that there's an element of disappearing to a place that's not me. It's "the selflessness of writing". It seldom happens, but when it does it's worth quite a lot.

Karl Ove Knausgard
Writing, Modern Novel, Trying

At the emergence of the modern novel with Rabelais and Cervantes, all kinds of things were possible in a long-form prose work. Within a couple of hundred years, most of those possibilities were abandoned in favor of a text that efficiently transmitted sentiments.

Teju Cole
Couple, Years, Modern Novel
Source: www.3ammagazine.com

The great modern novel of the comic-pathetic illusion of freedom is Confessions of Zeno .

Italo Svevo
Modern Novel, Illusion, Confession

For being able to use language was a critical skill that could carry one far. One could use it professionally, as a crafter of everything from political speeches to modern novels. One could use it personally, as a tool of discovery or a means of staying connected to others. One could use it as an outlet that would feed the artistic spirit of the creator, which existed in everyone.

Elizabeth George
Mean, Modern Novel, Skills

Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents are for the eye to glide over only. It will not do to read them out. I could never listen to even the better kind of modern novels without extreme irksomeness.

Charles Lamb
Book, Eye, Modern Novel
Charles Lamb, Thomas Noon Talfourd (1838). “Essays of Elia. Rosamund Gray. Recollections of Chirst's hospital. Essays on the tragedies of Shakspeare [etc.] Letters under assumed signatures published in the Reflector. Curious fragments. Mr. H”, p.192

A book is sent out into the world, and there is no way of fully anticipating the responses it will elicit. Consider the responses called forth by the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare - let alone contemporary poetry or a modern novel.

Chaim Potok
Book, Modern Novel, World

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