#nov

Among the many problems which beset the novelist, not the least weighty is the choice of the moment at which to begin his novel. ↗

— Vita Sackville-West

#begin #beset #choice #his #least

Between Scott on the earlier side and Dickens and Thackeray on the other, there was an immense production of novels, illustrated by not a few names which should rank high in the second class, while some would promote more than one of them to the first. ↗

— George Saintsbury

#class #dickens #earlier #few #first

I am a better novelist than a poet, playwright, or essayist. ↗

— Jose Saramago

#better #essayist #i #i am #novelist

It's the duty of all novelists, all painters, all musicians, all people who try to make art move: to look for something they feel authentically, without paying attention to styles. ↗

— Nathalie Sarraute

#attention #duty #feel #look #make

Even the crudest, most derivative novel is an expression of the author's hopes and fears and ideas about good and evil. ↗

— Steven Saylor

#author #derivative #even #evil #expression

A great novel is concerned primarily with the interior lives of its characters as they respond to the inconvenient narratives that fate imposes on them. Movie adaptations of these monumental fictions often fail because they become mere exercises in interior decoration. ↗

— Richard Schickel

#become #characters #concerned #decoration #exercises

Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form. ↗

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

#fled #form #into #liberal #novels

Oh, that sound? I'm in the hot tub, reading a novel. ↗

— Jane Smiley

#hot tub #i #novel #oh #reading

When you write a movie, you have a hundred collaborators. But when you write a novel, it's yours. ↗

— Sidney Sheldon

#hundred #movie #novel #write #you

Within my own life, I read all the beloved novels by lamps of vegetable oil; I saw the Standard Oil invading my own village, I saw gas lamps in the Chinese shops in Shanghai; and I saw their elimination by electric lights. ↗

— Hu Shih

#chinese #electric #elimination #gas #i