#novels

We don't tend to write about disease in fiction - not just teen novels but all American novels - because it doesn't fit in with our idea of the heroic romantic epic. There is room only for sacrifice, heroism, war, politics and family struggle. ↗

— John Green

#american #because #disease #epic #family

I don't write tracts, I write novels. I'm not a preacher, I'm a fiction writer. ↗

— Ursula K. Le Guin

#fiction writer #i #i write #novels #preacher

I get a lot of moral guidance from reading novels, so I guess I expect my novels to offer some moral guidance, but they're not blueprints for action, ever. ↗

— Ursula K. Le Guin

#blueprints #ever #expect #get #guess

Readers understand that the books celebrate female power. In the romance novel, the woman always wins. With courage, intelligence and gentleness she brings the most dangerous creature on the earth, the human male, to his knees. ↗

— Jayne Ann Krentz

#courage

Well, to be honest I think I'm a better short story writer than a novelist. Novels I find very hard, hours and hours, weeks and weeks, of conscious thought - whereas short stories slip out painlessly in a few days. ↗

— Eric Brown

#conscious #conscious thought #days #few #find

من لا يعاني ، تصبح كلماته مجرد جمع من حروف لا معنى له ، حتى و إن كان هذا الجمع عقد من الجواهر الفريد ↗

— تركي الحمد

#suffering-life #life

The clock ticks; the taunting rhythm serving as a reminder that forward is the only way we can go. The mechanical heartbeat of the darkness, a cold ellipsis, punctuating years gone by. Arising unchained. No glorious hymn, just the steady beat of the illusion of time. We heal or we carry forward the weight of our wounds... To believe otherwise is the mendacity of desperation. Arising honestly. The miles behind are littered with the weight of nostalgia, but too many miles lay ahead us to carry the weight. In the end, even echoes fade away. Pen in hand... Arising to write the next chapter. (MU Articles 2013, Dedication to Joey) ↗

— Shannon L. Alder

#forgetting-the-past #future #letting-go #life #love

The only time I've ever learned anything from a review was when John Lanchester wrote a piece in the Guardian about my second novel, The Heather Blazing. He said that, together with the previous novel, it represented a diptych about the aftermath of Irish independence. I simply hadn't known that – and I loved the grandeur of the word "diptych". I went around quite snooty for a few days, thinking: "I wrote a diptych." [Colm Tóibín, Novelist – Portrait of the Artist, The Guardian, 19 February 2013] ↗

— Colm Tóibín

#conceit #critique #diptychs #grandeur #novelists

Afterwards, as he held me and stroked my hair, my body was singing with pleasure, I couldn’t believe I had waited so long. I thought of how we had wasted a whole year we could have had together and I felt so sad I wanted to cry. ↗

— Somi Ekhasomhi

#romance #romance-novels #love

A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished. Marathoners have to carefully pace themselves so that they don't run out of energy (or in the case of the novelist-- ideas) because they have so far to run. To mix the metaphor, writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage. ↗

— Jonathan Carroll

#novels #short-fiction #short-stories #writing #writing-process