Novel Quotes - Page 9

There are some varieties of fiction that I never touch - mystery stories, for instance, which I abhor, and historical novels. I also detest the so-called "powerful" novel - full of commonplace obscenities and torrents of dialog.

Suspense is very important. Even though this is humor and they're short stories, that theory of building suspense is still there.

With a novelist, like a surgeon, you have to get a feeling that you've fallen into good hands - someone from whom you can accept the anesthetic with confidence.

Not all novelists are power-hungry madman. Some are power-hungry madwomen.

If you act like a victim, you are likely to be treated as one.

Therefore, when I considered this carefully, the contempt which I had to fear because of the novelty and apparent absurdity of my view, nearly induced me to abandon utterly the work I had begun.

Few novels or plays could exist without at least one troublemaker in the group, and perhaps life couldn't either.

I have been born more times than anybody except Krishna.

It's my own personal unconscious that ultimately creates the novel's aesthetic facade.

Novelty serves us for a kind of refreshment, and takes off from that satiety we are apt to complain of in our usual and ordinary entertainments.

Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing.

Japan offers as much novelty perhaps as an excursion to another planet.

I do have a very strong sense that most of the terrible things in life happen suddenly and unpredictably, and certainly can sweep you off in different directions, and that is always of interest to a novelist.

The economy of a novelist is a little like that of a careful housewife who is unwilling to throw away anything that might perhaps serve its turn.

Expansion, that is the idea the novelist must cling to, not completion, not rounding off, but opening out.

After I convinced them that I was a harmless novelist, I actually got them to give me a tour of the harem - which is usually off limits for tourists.

Unfortunately for novelists, real life is getting way too funny and far-fetched.

It is morally obscene to regard wealth as an anonymous, tribal product and to talk about 'redistributing' it.

Novelty has charms that our minds can hardly withstand.

An image often propels the novel, gets it started. For me, it's an image that has a lot of emotion connected to it.

Avoid the profane novelty of words, St. Paul says (I Timothy 6:20) ... For if novelty is to be avoided, antiquity is to be held tight to; and if novelty is profane, antiquity is sacred.

I find that in a novel I can get more of life, perhaps not such intense life, but certainly more of life than in poetry.

Do not marvel at the novelty of the thing, if a Virgin gives birth to God.

An old thing becomes new if you detach it from what usually surrounds it.

To be a novelist, all I need is a pen and a piece of paper.