#novel

I encourage the translators of my books to take as much license as they feel that they need. This is not quite the heroic gesture it might seem, because I've learned, from working with translators over the years, that the original novel is, in a way, a translation itself. ↗

— Michael Cunningham

#books #encourage #feel #gesture #heroic

I revise constantly, as I go along and then again after I've finished a first draft. Few of my novels contain a single sentence that closely resembles the sentence I first set down. I just find that I have to keep zapping and zapping the English language until it starts to behave in some way that vaguely matches my intentions. ↗

— Michael Cunningham

#again #along #behave #closely #constantly

Virginia Woolf's great novel, 'Mrs. Dalloway,' is the first great book I ever read. I read it almost by accident when I was in high school, when I was 15 years old. ↗

— Michael Cunningham

#almost #book #ever #first #great

You have started the book with this bubble over your head that contains a cathedral full of fire - that contains a novel so vast and great and penetrating and bright and dark that it will put all other novels ever written to shame. And then, as you get towards the end, you begin to realise, no, it's just this book. ↗

— Michael Cunningham

#book #bright #bubble #cathedral #contains

I envisioned that as my life: staying in academia to make a living and then taking summers off to write my novels. ↗

— David Duchovny

#envisioned #i #life #living #make

It was my angry, Dickensian novel, I suppose. It was cathartic - I expended a lot of frustration on that one. ↗

— Richard Helms

#cathartic #dickensian #expended #frustration #i

I regard this novel as a work without redeeming social value, unless it can be recycled as a cardboard box. ↗

— Ellen Goodman

#cardboard #cardboard box #i #novel #recycled

I've always wanted to write a novel. It's overwhelming and daunting, and it's one of those things that every writer fantasizes about doing. ↗

— Howard Gordon

#always #daunting #doing #every #i

I started writing seriously when I was 18, wrote my first novel when I was 22, and I've never stopped writing since. ↗

— Sue Grafton

#i #never #novel #seriously #since

I've always been a fan of the 19th century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major minor character, the passage of time and its effect on the characters in the story. ↗

— John Irving

#almost #always #been #central #century