Best Novel Quotes

Let's face it. There are good people and bad people everywhere. Illiteracy, poor education, wars, greed , corruption and similar factors were responsible for the problems in both India and Pakistan. Religious fanatics benefited from these factors and developed formidable socio-political strongholds in both countries. ~ Vivek Pereira

Besides being witty and funny and maybe the best novel ever written, it's also the most perfect romance in all of literature and nothing in life can ever measure up, so I spend my life limping in its shadow. ~ Shannon Hale

Writers are notoriously unable to know about themselves. Faulkner thought 'The Fable' was his best novel. F. Scott Fitzgerald liked 'Tender Is the Night,' an experimental novel. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

You were like reading a good novel. The kind were you wanted to turn every page, & never put it down... And absorb every second. But for whatever reason, that novel isn't there for me to read, & so, it's endless chapters are gone from my reach. And I don't dare to pretend to be surprised. But I do dare to wonder why.

And though it's gone, I smile because it was the best novel I ever read. In those brief moments the novel of you possessed me, mind, body, & soul alike.
I felt joy & adoration in such a degree, that if I never do again it'll be okay.

When you read a great novel, you never forget it. And you never let go of the feeling of it in your mind. The captivating nature of it. But greater than a novel, not mere words on a page, but a reality. Reality in a vivid form that can't begin to be put into words. That words, could not touch.

You're the kind of novel one would desperately want to finish. To keep near at hand & close at heart.
But it can't be. And though it's a mournful & somber thought, there's enjoyment in the knowledge that for a brief moment in time, it was there.

The novel of her, was a novel of breathtaking wonder. And if I never get to read another page, I'll cherish those I had the privilege of reading. And you can only hope that whoever reads it next, values it in the way you so know is deserved. ~ Trevor Driggers

Rebecca Mead's My Life in Middlemarch is a wise, humane, and delightful study of what some regard as the best novel in English. Mead has discovered an original and highly personal way to make herself an inhabitant both of the book and of George Eliot's imaginary city. Though I have read and taught the book these many years I find myself desiring to go back to it after reading Rebecca Mead's work. ~ Harold Bloom

People who shop at Barnes and Noble voted Ulysses the best novel of the last century, and who's to tell them different? There was a point when I would have liked to, but apparently that's just because I'm a bitch. ~ Dale Peck

I'm a novelist at heart. My sole intention is to write the best novel possible. I don't think about the film potential at all. ~ Nicholas Sparks

In the end, for me, the sole single goal is to write the best novel that I can. Whether or not it gets made or gets purchased. ~ Nicholas Sparks

The best novel I wrote was one called 'Crusoe's Daughter,' which never won any prizes. But I was getting somewhere in that. I'm not sure I have in any of the others. ~ Jane Gardam

For one thing, she hadn't exactly chosen a field; although she has since childhood imagined picking up her Oscar, the category has never been determined. There was some thought that by the time she grew up they would give out Oscars for Best Novel (and that by then she would have written one), or that maybe she would just get some kind of honorary Oscar for her distinctive life observations made in everyday conversations, or the occasional letter. ~ Elizabeth Crane

I went on steadily trying to 'find out how to'; but I wrote two or three novels without feeling that I had made much progress. It was not until I wrote "Ethan Frome" that I suddenly felt the artisan's full control of his implements. When "Ethan Frome" first appeared I was severely criticized by the reviewers for what was considered the clumsy structure of the tale. I had pondered long on this structure, had felt its peculiar difficulties, and possible awkwardness, but could think of no alternative which would serve as well in the given case: and though I am far from thinking "Ethan Frome" my best novel, and am bored and even exasperated when I am told that it is, I am still sure that its structure is not its weak point. ~ Edith Wharton

I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn't until I was about 30 that I got serious about writing prose. While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels; I liked them. ~ Paul Auster

Before you go ahead with a flashback, ask yourself if you can
make the same impact on your reader through conflict in the
now of the novel. If the answer is no, then the flashback is
necessary, but remember that within the flashback all the same
principles of good dramatic storytelling which apply in the now
of your story - fully rounded characters, a rising conflict, inner
conflicts, and so on - continue to apply. ~ James N. Frey

'Flash mobs' are reported on extensively because they're novel and can be used to stoke fears of young people and the Internet. The media, of course, have absolutely no clue what they're reporting on. ~ Alex Pareene

I wrote a novel for my degree, and I'm very happy I didn't submit that to a publisher. I sympathize with my professors who had to read it. ~ David Eddings

People have incredible nerve to do terrible things, but never actually admit to them. ~ Henry Mosquera

In the past, it was only in science fiction novels that you could read about ordinary people being able to go to space ... But you laid the foundation for space tourism. ~ Nursultan Nazarbayev

In 1890, Donnelly published Caesar's Column, a dystopian science fiction novel set in the far-off 1980s, when the United States had become a capitalist tyranny controlled by a ruthless Jewish oligarchy. ~ Arthur Goldwag

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means. ~ Richard Dawkins

However, the difficulties and pleasures of the writing itself are similar for a novel with a historical setting and a novel with a contemporary setting, as far as I'm concerned. ~ Helen Dunmore

When my first novel was published, I went in great excitement round bookshops in central London to see if they had stocked it. ~ Antony Beevor

Some writers can produce marvelous plots without planning it out, but I can't. In particular I need to know the structure of a novel: what's going to happen in each chapter and each scene. ~ Emma Donoghue

Novelists congratulate themselves on their creation of this kind of "character" or that kind of "character," and readers pretend to talk knowingly about "character," but all it amounts to is that the writers are enjoying themselves writing lies and the readers are enjoying themselves reading lies. In fact, there is no such thing as character, something fixed and final. The real thing is something that novelists don't know how to write about. Or, if they tried, the end result would never be a novel. Real people are strangely difficult to make sense out of. Even a god would have his hands full trying. ~ Soseki Natsume

When does a novel begin? The question is almost as difficult to answer as the question, when does the human embryo become a person? ~ David Lodge

The turning point was when I hit my 30th birthday. I thought, if really want to write, it's time to start. I picked up the book How to Write a Novel in 90 Days. The author said to just write three pages a day, and I figured, I can do this. I never got past Page 3 of that book. ~ James Rollins

My first novel - the novel I wrote before 'Midnight's Children' - feels, to me, now, very - I mean, I get embarrassed when I see people reading it. You know, there are some people who, bizarrely, like it. Which I'm, you know, I'm happy for. ~ Salman Rushdie

I can never decide if Tom's hair is the color of caramel fudge or chocolate. Either way, yum. The texture is like a romance novel that's fallen into the bath, then dried: vaguely sexual crinkle waves with the occasional curled edge and dog-ear. I want to jam my hand in it and make a gentle fist. ~ Sally Thorne

For over a decade,
She stood there once a while,
Gazing at the Infinite sea,
On-call to engulf whoever jumps,
And then, a day,
She dived into it,
With fragmented emotions,
And worn-out soul,
To a novel desire,
To an unseasoned growth,
En route a superior essence. ~ Irfa Rahat

As thoroughly as mankind has killed God, the reader has despatched the author. ~ Johnny Rich

Strangely enough, the first character in Fried Green Tomatoes was the cafe, and the town. I think a place can be as much a character in a novel as the people. ~ Fannie Flagg

Attributing to another author, Writing a novel is like setting a goal and walking there in your sleep. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

Writing a novel is the ultimate in sweat equity. ~ Mark Rubinstein

I've never been able to force a novel. I always had the sense something being given to me. You can't sit around and wait until inspiration strikes, but neither can you force into being something that isn't there. ~ Margaret Laurence

I will only write the novel, if I can solve the crime ~ Andrew Hixson

It frequently happens that I begin a novel with just a visual image of something, a vague sense of people in three dimensional space. ~ Don DeLillo

She was like a heroine in a novel that she herself was writing the character kept protesting that she was too strong for love and yet the narrator went on describing her desire. ~ Anna Godbersen

If valleys are the dimples on the face of the earth, as Steven King once said, then Silicon Valley is the deepest, most sparkling dimple of them all. ~ Betty Dravis

Romance and novel paint beauty in colors more charming than nature, and describe a happiness that humans never taste. How deceptive and destructive are those pictures of consummate bliss! ~ Oliver Goldsmith

Maybe. Just maybe ... Lettie smiled. That would do. It might be an impossible plan but it's worth a try. ~ Sam Gayton

Only a crazy man would write a novel in Lincoln's voice. ~ Jerome Charyn

A day without someone to hold you or a day without someone to share, is a day easily forgotten.' - Vera Richardson in Mr Alhourani's Dead Man's Spots ~ D.M. Lee

At the beginning of the project, I wasn't certain that I could come up with an engaging storyline and cast of characters in this world, so I had a strong bias toward actually writing, and worrying about research later. In other words, I was afraid that I'd devote a year or two of my life to grinding through Kant and Husserl, then discover that there simply was no novel to be written here. ~ Neal Stephenson

In a sense, the first (if not necessarily the prime) function of a novelist, of ANY artist, is to entertain. If the poem, painting, play or novel does not immediately engage one's surface interest then it has failed. Whatever else it may or may not be, art is also entertainment. Bad art fails to entertain. Good art does something in addition. ~ Brigid Brophy

The conditions of writing change absolutely between the first novel and the second: the first is an adventure, the second is a duty. The first is like a sprint which leaves you exhausted and triumphant beside the track. With the second the writer has been transformed into a long-distance runner - the finishing tape is out of sight, at the end of life. He must guard his energies and plan ahead. A long endurance is more exhausting than a sprint, and less heroic. ~ Graham Greene

Write or perish in the banality of mediocrity! ~ Thomas K. Matthews

I have often heard that the novel is dead. But I see novels produced, I don't know how many a week, in France. I have the impression it's carrying along quite well. ~ Nathalie Sarraute

I don't trust novels with points, do you? If a novel is only about a point, the writer should just say it in as few words as possible so we can take it in and go back to watching 'The Bachelor' on television. ~ William Lashner

I'm guessing you're tits deep in a horror novel. Something by Laymon, or Ketchum, or one of those sick fucks you read. ~ Kyle M. Scott

There would be more genuine rejoicing at the discovery of a complete new novel by Jane Austen than any other literary discovery, short of a new major play by Shakespeare. ~ Margaret Drabble

You must write as if Dostoyevsky himself will be reading your novel, and Shakespeare will be acting it out. ~ Christina Westover

I am a man and alive. For this reason I am a novelist. And, being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, te scientist, the philosopher, and the poet, who are all great masters of different bits of man alive, but never get the whole hog ... Only in the novel are all things given full play. ~ D.H. Lawrence

There is no alternative universe where Ralph Sampson is a beloved symbol of excellence. There's no Philip K. Dick novel where he averages a career double-double and gets four rings. He could never be that guy. He was needed elsewhere, for other reasons. He was needed to remind people that their own self-imposed mediocrity is better than choking on transcendence. ~ Chuck Klosterman

Why, I've seen Kentuckians who hated whiskey, Virginians who weren't descended from Pocahontas, Indianians who hadn't written a novel, Mexicans who didn't wear velvet trousers with silver dollars sewed along the seams, funny Englishmen, spendthrift Yankees, cold-blooded Southerners, narrow- minded Westerners, and New Yorkers who were too busy to stop for an hour on the street to watch a one-armed grocer's clerk do up cranberries in paper bags. Let a man be a man and don't handicap him with the label of any section. ~ O. Henry