#novel

I have never started a novel - I mean except the first, when I was starting a novel just to start a novel - I've never written one without rereading Victory. It opens up the possibilities of a novel. It makes it seem worth doing. ↗

— Joan Didion

#except #first #i #just #makes

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. ↗

— Joan Didion

#down #every #go #like #novels

Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel, and sometimes all the way through. The work process is totally different from writing nonfiction. You have to sit down every day and make it up. ↗

— Joan Didion

#daily #day #different #down #dread

Novels for me are how I find out what's going on in my own head. And so that's a really useful and indeed critical thing to do when you do as many of these other things as I do. ↗

— Cory Doctorow

#find #going #head #how #i

I'm not the sort of writer who can walk into a party and take a look around, see who's sleeping with whom and go home and write a novel about society. It's not the way I work. ↗

— E. L. Doctorow

#around #go #go home #home #i

I found my first novel difficult. I don't want to make it sound like it's any more difficult than driving a cab or going to any other job, but there are so many opportunities for self-doubt, that you just kind of need to soldier on. ↗

— Anthony Doerr

#cab #difficult #driving #first #found

It takes a lot of energy and a lot of neurosis to write a novel. If you were really sensible, you'd do something else. ↗

— Lawrence Durrell

#energy #lot #neurosis #novel #really

After closely examining my conscience, I venture to state that in my historical novels I intended the content to be just as modern and up-to-date as in the contemporary ones. ↗

— Lion Feuchtwanger

#closely #conscience #contemporary #content #examining

I had a daddy, didn't I? He wasn't perfect and he certainly wasn't the one I'd dreamed he would have been, but I had one all the same. And I'd love him as much as I'd hated him, hadn't I? All that distance, all that time wasted, but the fact that he'd inspired such passion in me meant something in itself. I can honestly say now that I think that's special. Screwed up and turned inside out, we were special him and me, and I am so thankful that I can say that I had a daddy and that he mattered. All his faults and failures mean nothing to me now. ↗

— Melodie Ramone

#novel-quotes #dreams

Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed. ↗

— Kanye West

#just be #novels #people #self-absorbed #sometimes