Epistolary Novel Quotes

There is such malice, treachery, and dissimulation, even among professed friends and intimate companions, as cannot fail to strike a virtuous mind with horror; and when Vice quits the stage for a moment, her place is immediately occupied by Folly... ~ Tobias Smollett

We stepped to the window. Off to one side there was thunder, and the splendid rain was trickling down upon the land; the most refreshing fragrance rose up to us from the rich abundance of the warm atmosphere. She stood leaning on her elbows, with her gaze searching the countryside; she looked up to heaven and at me; I saw her eyes fill with tears, and she laid her hand on mine, saying, "Klopstock!" I recalled at once the glorious ode she had in mind, and became immersed in the stream of emotions which she had poured over me by uttering this symbolic name. I could not bear it, I bent down over hand and kissed it amid tears of the utmost rapture. And looked into her eyes again - noble poet! Would that you had seen your apotheosis in that gaze, and would that your name, so often profaned, would never reach my ears from any other lips. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary. ~ C.S. Lewis

She had a way about her that spoke of homemade bread, and caring for people, and the kind of patience that women have when they help a ewe birth a lamb, or stay up in the night with a baby calf bawling for its momma. ~ James Aura

Cut like crazy. Less is more. I've often read manuscripts - including my own - where I've got to the beginning of, say, chapter two and have thought: "This is where the novel should actually start." A huge amount of information about character and backstory can be conveyed through small detail. The emotional attachment you feel to a scene or a chapter will fade as you move on to other stories. Be business-like about it. ~ Sarah Waters

Two characters and sexy banter do not a book make, damn it. ~ Sherry Thomas

Our pendants glowed in unison and I understood that they represented us – Siren and human intertwined for eternity. ~ Erica Sehyun Song

Let's not forget The Things They Do To Make Themselves Happy That Actually Make Them Miserable. This is an infinite list. It includes - shopping, watching TV, taking the better job, getting the bigger house, writing a semi-autobiographical novel, educating their young, making their skin look mildly less old and harboring a vague desire to believe there might be a meaning to it all. ~ Matt Haig

Writing a page each day doesn't seem like much, but do it for 365 days and you have enough to fill a novel. ~ Austin Kleon

I think there's something to the idea that the divine dwells more easily in text than in images. Text allows for more abstract thought, more of a separation between you and the physical world, more room for you and God to meet in the middle. I find it hard enough to conceive of an infinite being. Imagine if those original scrolls came in the form of a graphic novel with pictures of the Lord? I'd never come close to communing with the divine. ~ A. J. Jacobs

Whenever I come across someone speaking negatively about escapism or looking down on those who seek a temporary escape from this world, I can't help but look at them as absolute fools. To deny someone the right to find temporary peace in escapism is to deny human nature itself as well as all the benefits of such a beautiful concept. Often times, these instances show them saying that "it'll only make things worse" or "it's not gonna change anything", except, a lot of times, that's not the case at all. How many times has someone shut themselves away from the world by listening to a song they hold dear only to return more ready to face the world than before, how many times has someone learned something about themselves through the fictional events of a novel that they wouldn't have other wise, how many times has society experienced great change through people who dreamed of making the world a better place, only to eventually make those dreams into a reality. ~ Justin Allen

When I wrote 'The Pregnant Widow' three or four years ago, I tried to reread my first novel, 'The Rachel Papers,' because their young heroes are the same age. I couldn't finish it. It seemed to me so technically slapdash and weak. ~ Martin Amis

If a writer writes poems and short stories and novels, but nobody ever reads them, is she really a writer? ~ Jennifer Weiner

The single most important technique for making progress is to write ten words. Doesn't matter if you're badly stuck, or your day is completely jam-packed, or you're away from your computer - carry a small paper notebook and write a sentence of description while you're waiting on line at a coffee shop. I think of this as baiting a hook. Even if you have a few days in a row where nothing comes except those ten words, I find that as long as you have to think about the novel enough to write ten words, the chances are that more will come. ~ Naomi Novik

Writing a novel is like knocking on a door that will never open. You are so desperate to get in, you will say or do anything. You feel: please take my novel. ~ Samantha Shannon

As I get older, my childhood self becomes more accessible to me, but selectively, in images as stylized and suspect as moments remembered from a novel read years ago. ~ John Updike

Reading is a bridge from misery to hope. ~ Rebecca VanDeMark

The current extinction has its own novel cause: not an asteroid or a massive volcanic eruption but one weedy species. ~ Elizabeth Kolbert

It was like starting to write a novel. When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages a sick sense of failure falls on me and I know I can never do it. This happens every time. Then gradually I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate and I eliminate the possibility of ever finishing. So ~ John Steinbeck

I've seen novels that have grown out of one story in a collection. But it hasn't occurred to me to take any of those stories and build on them. They seem very finished for me, so I don't feel like going back and dredging them up. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

The image of a teenage boy dressed in a black uniform, his babyish face partly obscured by an official looking cap, paralysed every muscle and nerve in her body. The pink telegram loomed large in her line of sight... ~ Michael J. Murphy

With relatively few exceptions, the novel sacrifices too much, for me, on the altar of plot. ~ David Shields

'Dexter,' while the pilot shares moments with the novel that created the character of Dexter, they completely abandoned the book from that moment on. ~ Jim Rash

This is better than a romance novel." P.J. said with a wistful sigh.
"You read that stuff?" Cole demanded.
"Why the hell do you ask the question like that?" P.J. said, annoyance evident in her tone and expression.
"You just didn't seem the type," Cole mumbled.
She flipped him the bird, and Shea had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. P.J. was easily half Cole's size but she also looked like she had the confidence to take on the much larger man. She might even kick his ass. The idea intrigued Shea greatly.
"I'm tempted to shove one of my romance novels up your ass." P.J. said sharply. "But I love my books too much to desecrate them like that, I'll settle for my boot."
Cole held up his hands in surrender. "I won't say another word. Romance novels are great. I love romance novels. I think everyone should read them. ~ Maya Banks

Doubt you'd find anyone as dashingly charming as me ~ Veronica Purcell

Sick children inevitably become arrested: You are fated to live out your days as the child you were when diagnosed, the child who believes there is a life after a novel ends. ~ John Green

He pulled out his keys and unlocked the door. There was a pile of mail waiting on the floor, which made him chuckle. The last memories of normal life, he thought. He picked up his mail and tossed it into the garbage. ~ Jason Medina

'The Dovekeepers' is a fantastic novel written by Alice Hoffman; it was a bestselling novel, and I fell in love with the book and bought the rights to it. ~ Roma Downey

Never in any Jane Austen novel did the love interest pretend to be a fortune-teller," Helen said, "Why would someone do that? ~ Cynthia Hand

It feels like I'm trapped in quicksand. The more I struggle, the more I sink. So I stop struggling. I stop trying to free myself; because the more I struggle the scarier it becomes. Then - and only then did panic yield long enough for a numbness to spread and stick to me like a second skin. ~ Jannet Casas

An unforgettable tale of love, lust, faith, betrayal, and redemption. A powerful, mesmerizing suspense novel-a tour de force! ~ Judith Kelman

You can't do science in a novel, but you can do philosophy. Or, if you're really lucky, you can manage to pose a question in such a way that other people will take it on. ~ Scarlett Thomas

I live intimately with my characters before starting a book. I cut out pictures of them for my wall. I do time lines for each major character and a time line for the entire novel: What is going on in the world as my characters struggle with their problems? ~ Walter Dean Myers

A novel, or a book on philosophy, is going to use both sides of the brain: not only will you have feelings about what you read, but your mind will also get more of a work-out because you will make connections between what you are learning and what you already recognize. ~ Philippa Perry

Of course I planned to write the Great American Novel; that lasted about a week, at which point I decided I had nothing to say that could possibly qualify. So I wrote a romance instead. ~ Jasmine Cresswell

There are often references to childhood, but they're rarely the focus of the [my] novels. ~ Paul Auster

There is a change coming I think in the lives of girls and women. Yes. But it is up to us to make it come. All women have had up till now has been their connection with men. All we have had. No more lives of our own, really, than domestic animals. He shall hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force, a little closer than his dog, a little dearer than his horse. Tennyson wrote that. It's true. Was true. You will want to have children, though. ~ Alice Munro

you are out of the field of the novel ~ Anthony Burgess

Bela had thought she knew what love felt like, but when she saw Sanjay at the airport after six long months, her heart gave a great, hurtful lurch, as though it were trying to leap out of her body to meet him. This, she thought. This is it. But it was only part of the truth. She would learn over the next years that love can feel a lot of different ways, and sometimes it can hurt a lot more. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Seriously, I think what all the puzzling over parenthood I had to do to write [a novel]ROOM taught me is that children can thrive in a remarkable range of situations. ~ Emma Donoghue

I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows. ~ E. M. Forster

It is one of the great blessings of youth, this guiltlessness, the source of gentle sleep and peaceful days. ~ John Pipkin