#novels

I started writing morning pages just to keep my hand in, you know, just because I was a writer and I didn't know what else to do but write. And then one day as I was writing, a character came sort of strolling in and I realized, Oh my God, I don't have to be just a screenwriter. I can write novels. ↗

— Julia Cameron

#came #character #day #else #god

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

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

I’ve only been to jail a few times, but in several different countries, at that. No, I've only been to jail a few times. But I still claim the ability to write a "serious" novel. ↗

— Roman Payne

#growth #hard-times #hardship #jail #jailbird

A freedom given up is not so easily regained. ↗

— Rivera Sun

#civil-liberty #civil-rights-movement #constitution #constitutional-rights #freedom

Every novel is an attempt to capture time, to weave something solid out of air. The author knows it is an impossible task - that is why he keeps on trying. ↗

— David Beaty

#novels #writing #inspirational

I like what I do. Some writers have said in print that they hated writing and it was just a chore and a burden. I certainly don't feel that way about it. Sometimes it's difficult. You know, you always have this image of the perfect thing which you can never achieve, but which you never stop trying to achieve. But I think ... that's your signpost and your guide. You'll never get there, but without it you won't get anywhere. [Interview with Oprah Winfrey, June 5, 2007] ↗

— Cormac McCarthy

#fiction #goals #guidance #novels #perfection

Diana felt she was beginning to understand why, in all those novels she read, the headiest loves were the loves that couldn't be. ↗

— Anna Godbersen

#novels #reading #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