#novel

But I always seem to finish a book and then think, oh God, I've got to pay a tax bill, so I'd better write a novel, so I tend not to stop and learn word processing. ↗

— Jilly Cooper

#better #bill #book #finish #god

Therefore, when I considered this carefully, the contempt which I had to fear because of the novelty and apparent absurdity of my view, nearly induced me to abandon utterly the work I had begun. ↗

— Nicolaus Copernicus

#absurdity #apparent #because #begun #carefully

If I were a writer, how I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature. Lovely. ↗

— Don DeLillo

#central #dead #enjoy #how #i

You have to go out of your way as a suspense novelist to find situations where the protagonists are somewhat helpless and in real danger. ↗

— Nelson DeMille

#find #go #helpless #novelist #out

The easy answer is that writing novels is a lot more fun than practicing law. ↗

— Jeffery Deaver

#easy #fun #law #lot #more

But I was right and the real world seemed increasingly nonsensical. Why train for years to do a job you bitched about all day? Didn't it make more sense to follow your dreams and maybe do a little good at the same time? I didn't want to be a lawyer or a bank manager or a goddamn burger flipper. We only get one life and I wanted mine to be exciting... ↗

— Mark Millar

#dreams

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

Things that appear on the front page of the newspaper as 'fact' are far more dangerous than the games played by a novelist, and can lead to wars. ↗

— E. L. Doctorow

#dangerous #fact #far #front #games