#novel

Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write: they're casting, they're dressing the scene, they're working out where the energy of the scene is coming from and they're also relying tremendously on the creative imagination of the reader. ↗

— John le Carre

#casting #coming #creative #dressing #energy

Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms. ↗

— Angela Carter

#book #bring #experience #history #like

I may attempt a novel. I think that no matter what you write, it requires being honest with oneself, and you have to pull yourself out of the whirlwind of daily life. ↗

— Iris Chang

#being #being honest #daily #daily life #honest

But there is no doubt that to attempt a novel of ideas is to give oneself a handicap: the parochialism of our culture is intense. For instance, decade after decade bright young men and women emerge from their universities able to say proudly: 'Of course I know nothing about German literature.' It is the mode. The Victorians knew everything about German literature, but were able with a clear conscience not to know much about the French. ↗

— Doris Lessing

#novel #writing #education

'Caught' is a novel of forgiveness, and the past and the present - who should be and who shouldn't be forgiven. None of my books are ever just about thrills, or it won't work. ↗

— Harlan Coben

#books #caught #ever #forgiven #forgiveness

In real life, coincidences happen all the time. In novels, they are leapt upon with fury. ↗

— Harlan Coben

#fury #happen #life #novels #real

You know, people call mystery novels or thrillers 'puzzles.' I never understood that, because when I buy a puzzle, I already know what it is. It's on the box. And even if I don't, if it's a 5,000-piece puzzle of the 'Mona Lisa', it's not like I put the last piece in and go, 'I had no idea it's the 'Mona Lisa'!' ↗

— Harlan Coben

#because #box #buy #call #even

At a certain point my novels set. They set just as hard as that jam jar. And then I know they are finished. ↗

— Ivy Compton-Burnett

#certain point #finished #hard #i #jam

I wrote eight full-length adult novels in my twenties. None of them were published. ↗

— Caroline B. Cooney

#eight #i #none #novels #published

The earth was made so various, that the mind Of desultory man, studious of change, And pleased with novelty, might be indulged. ↗

— William Cowper

#earth #indulged #made #man #might