Good Novel Quotes & Sayings

I also need to prepare myself for the inevitability of utter boredom: Very often, single people don't do shit. They do nothing, all night long. They sit in a recliner and watch TV. I've probably watched more television than anyone you've ever met, and I don't even own one. Terrible shows, good shows, Golf tournaments in Cancun. C-SPAN. Hours of Oprah. Law and Order. Lonely people love Law and Order, for whatever reason. They prefer the straight narratives. p60 — Chuck Klosterman

The reviews on it, and the new novel, Honky Tonk Samurai have been awesome, though I'm of the school if you believe the good ones you got to believe the bad ones, it's been mostly good ones. The previewers seem to be very happy and excited about it. I know I am. There are plans to continue if it does well. — Joe R. Lansdale

The book is finished by the reader. A good novel should invite the reader in and let the reader participate in the creative experience and bring their own life experiences to it, interpret with their own individual life experiences. Every reader gets something different from a book and every reader, in a sense, completes it in a different way. — Alan Lightman

The problem with love is that there is so much of it to give." King Tommy — Monique Golda Nerman

When our children are old enough, and if we can afford to, we send them to college, where despite the recent proliferation of courses on 'happiness' and 'positive psychology,' the point is to acquire the skills not of positive thinking but of *critical* thinking, and critical thinking is inherently skeptical. The best students
and in good colleges, also the most successful
are the ones who raise sharp questions, even at the risk of making a professor momentarily uncomfortable. Whether the subject is literature or engineering, graduates should be capable of challenging authority figures, going against the views of their classmates, and defending novel points of view. — Barbara Ehrenreich

And if I'm guilty of having gratuitous sex, then I'm also guilty of having gratuitous violence, and gratuitous feasting, and gratuitous description of clothes, and gratuitous heraldry, because very little of this is necessary to advance the plot. But my philosophy is that plot advancement is not what the experience of reading fiction is about. If all we care about is advancing the plot, why read novels? We can just read Cliffs Notes.
A novel for me is an immersive experience where I feel as if I have lived it and that I've tasted the food and experienced the sex and experienced the terror of battle. So I want all of the detail, all of the sensory things - whether it's a good experience, or a bad experience, I want to put the reader through it. To that mind, detail is necessary, showing not telling is necessary, and nothing is gratuitous. — George R R Martin

I concede that a bad romantic novel is embarrassing and indefensible. So is a bad so-called realistic novel. (And it is usually pretentious into the bargain which is insufferable.) But a good romantic novel is a heart-warming thing which strikes a responsive chord in those who are happy and offers a certain lifting of the spirits to those who are not. — Mary Burchell

If you surround yourself with the good and righteous, they can only raise you up. If you surround yourself with the others, they will drag you down into the doldrums of mediocrity, and they will keep you there, but only as long as you permit it. — Mark Glamack

I dedicate this novel to Gala, who was constantly by my side while I was writing it, who was the good fairy of my equilibrium, who banished the salamanders of my doubts and strengthened the lions of certainties ... — Salvador Dali

I think Dr. Willis McNelly at the California State University at Fullerton put it best when he said that the true protagonist of an sf story or novel is an idea and not a person. If it is *good* sf the idea is new, it is stimulating, and, probably most important of all, it sets off a chain-reaction of ramification-ideas in the mind of the reader; it so-to-speak unlocks the reader's mind so that the mind, like the author's, begins to create. Thus sf is creative and it
inspires creativity, which mainstream fiction by-and-large does not do. We who read sf (I am speaking as a reader now, not a writer) read it because we love to experience this chain-reaction of ideas being set off in our minds by something we read, something with a new idea in it; hence the very best since fiction ultimately winds up being a collaboration between author and reader, in which both create and enjoy doing it: joy is the essential and final ingredient of science fiction, the joy of discovery of newness. — Philip K. Dick

I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author's political views. — Edith Wharton

You know," Kavita begins, "I think I can pick out my own furniture. I am an artist after all. I do have some taste."
"No you don't." Nick plainly states. "No man has taste. Besides, I didn't pick it out, she did. Wives are good for things like that. — Carroll Bryant

When you're lucky enough to have a good film made of your novel - and 'Never Let Me Go' is, believe me, a heartbreakingly good film indeed - you get wonderfully talented individuals each focusing on their special area. — Kazuo Ishiguro

A good novel is a conjunction of many factors, the main of which is without a doubt, hard work. — Mario Vargas-Llosa

Surely the test of a novel's characters is that you feel a strong interest in them and their affairs the good to be successful, the bad to suffer failure. Well, in John Ward, you feel no divided interest, no discriminating interest you want them all to land in hell together, and right away. — Mark Twain

I was pretty dead set against ever writing an academic novel. It's always been my view that there are already more than enough academic novels and that most of them aren't any good. Most of them are self-conscious and bitter, the work of people who want to settle grudges. — Richard Russo

Good or evil, it doesn't really matter, so long as your novel's character is interesting. — Mark Rubinstein

When people say the word "convention," they are usually referring to large gatherings of the employees of companies and corporations who attend a mass assembly, usually in a big hotel somewhere, for the purpose of pretending to learn stuff when they are in fact enjoying a free trip somewhere, time off work, and the opportunity to flirt with strangers, drink, and otherwise indulge themselves. The first major difference between a business convention and a fan-dom convention is that fandom doesn't bother with the pretenses. They're just there to have a good time. The second difference is the dress code - the ensembles at a fan convention tend to be considerably more novel. — Jim Butcher

A novel seemed the easiest way to get what I had had in my head into the inside of other people's heads. Books are good that way. — Neil Gaiman

The image of evolution as a process that reliably produces benign effects is difficult to reconcile with the enormous suffering that we see in both the human and the natural world. Those who cherish evolution's achievements may do so more from an aesthetic than an ethical perspective. Yet the pertinent question is not what kind of future it would be fascinating to read about in a science fiction novel or to see depicted in a nature documentary, but what kind of future it would be good to live in: two very different matters. — Nick Bostrom

It [fiction] allows us to see the world from the point of view of someone else and there has been quite a lot of neurological research that shows reading novels is actually good for you. It embeds you in society and makes you think about other people. People are certainly better at all sorts of things if they can hold a novel in their heads. It is quite a skill, but if you can't do it then you're missing out on something in life. I think you can tell, when you meet someone, whether they read novels or not. There is some little hollowness if they don't. — Philip Hensher

I hate the concept of likeability - it gave us two terms of George Bush, whom a plurality of voters wanted to have a beer with, and Facebook. You'd unfriend a lot of people if you knew them as intimately and unsparingly as a good novel would. But not the ones you actually love. — Jonathan Franzen

And now Nineteen persons having been hang'd, and one prest to death, and Eight more condemned, in all Twenty and Eight, of which above a third part were Members of some of the Churches of N. England, and more than half of them of a good Conversation in general, and not one clear'd; about Fifty having confest themselves to be Witches, of which not one Executed; above an Hundred and Fifty in Prison, and Two Hundred more accused; the Special Commision of Oyer and Terminer comes to a period.
- Robert Calef 1692 — Robert Calef

Most good novelists have been women or homosexuals. The novel is the triumphant evolved creation, one increasingly has to think, of these two groups, who have cooperated more closely in this domain than in any other. — Nicholson Baker

I don't think the 'what' distinguishes a good novel from a bad one but rather the 'how.' — Joseph Heller

Nabokov calls every great novel a fairy tale, I said. Well, I would agree. First, let me remind you that fairy tales abound with frightening witches who eat children and wicked stepmothers who poison their beautiful stepdaughters and weak fathers who leave their children behind in forests. But the magic comes from the power of good, that force which tells us we need not give in to the limitations and restrictions imposed on us by McFate, as Nabokov called it.
Every fairy tale offers the potential to surpass present limits, so in a sense the fairy tale offers you freedoms that reality denies. In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. — Azar Nafisi

I do think a good story in a novel is fair game and there's nothing wrong with adapting that. It sometimes gets a bit facile where they think: "Let's get the next best-seller and see if we can turn it into a film." — Colin Firth

He had a book to finish. Ten-thousand words. The other ninety thousand had been difficult. This last tenth seemed impossible. His plot had become derailed. He was unable to see his way through the smoke and coke dust of a mythical railway track that should stretch ahead. Yes, the characters were there, good and solid. Indeed, the story's engine was strong and had shunted yet forward and forward, with only one or two sharp halts. But six weeks ago he met the bumpers. R. was now stuck in a deserted station, his progress blocked. ("Out Back") — Garry Douglas Kilworth

I'm sure that everything you do contributes to the sort of novel that you write. A lot of actors have an understanding of drama and a good ear for dialogue and also the rhythm of speech. Similarly, my 16 years in radio drama has influenced me. You only have 45 minutes, or 7,000 words, to tell a story, so every scene has to have a point. — Rachel Joyce

It's not even a comfort when he's kind about it either, because in a way I don't want him to be. I want him to tell me that I'm no good, and that maybe I should get out of the car and walk in the rain like the tragic heroine of some melodramatic novel. — Charlotte Stein

It's just the garbage in/garbage out trick. If you're not taking any fiction in, good or bad, then how can you be spitting any back out (good or bad)? I can't even imagine trying to write without reading. Really, I can hardly write a novel at all if I'm not reading just book after book. — Stephen Graham Jones

Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at night, but do not enter into relations. But not for the novel. — W. H. Auden

What a joy it is to read a book that shocks one into remembering just how high one's literary standards should be. ... a tour de force by one of England's best novelists ... . Atonement is a spectacular book; as good a novel - and more satisfying ... - than anything McEwan has written ... .sublimely written narrative ... . The Dunkirk passage is a stupendous piece of writing, a set piece that could easily stand on its own. ... — Noah Richler

I was a little bit wary of playing Nicholas. In the script, which I think is true of the novel and the film, he's the only character not singing and dancing in a musical style. Playing someone who is the personification of good is a little difficult. — Charlie Hunnam

From sublime affairs of state to the stark and vulgar popular culture of our own contemporary lives, let's make this descent into the lower registers together and recognize the good, nasty fun of 'Gone Girl,' Chicago writer Gillian Flynn's novel about the mysterious disappearance of a clever and deceptive young Midwestern housewife. — Alan Cheuse

The couch and I were what I would describe as frenemies. I loved to hate it. It was too small for my frame. I had tried to tell my wife that fact when we bought it off of Craigslist, but she assured me that it went perfectly with our room decor and it was a good deal. — Anna M. Aquino

Good novel are written by people who are not frightened. — George Orwell

As a teacher at Princeton, I'm surrounded by people who work hard so I just make good use of my time. And I don't really think of it as work - writing a novel, in one sense, is a problem-solving exercise. — Joyce Carol Oates

On the whole, dialogue is the most difficult thing, without any doubt. It's very difficult, unfortunately. You have to detach yourself from the notion of a lifelike quality. You see, actually lifelike, tape-recorded dialogue like this has very little to do with good novel dialogue. It's a matter of getting that awful tyranny of mimesis out of your mind, which is difficult. — John Fowles

JACK KIRBY is also the central personage of this novel because this is not a good novel. This is a seriously mixed-up book with a central personage who never appears. The plot, like life, resolves into nothing and features emotional suffering without meaning. — Jarett Kobek

One Bagatelle, and I'll raise you a novel," Megan had tweeted back.
"Writing for tea? Now that would have been a solution for the British empire," Laura returned.
"Writing for me," Megan had typed.
"I'll write you a tea fortune."
"No deal. I want a novel. September sounds good. — L.L. Barkat

A life without purpose is like a novel without a plot. It wanders all over the place, is hard to follow, and in the end, doesn't get particularly good reviews. — Mardy Grothe

Life managed without males for its first billion years, much of which was passed as single cells in a series of warm ponds. Then, in some ancient and neutral Eden, the fruit of the tree of sexual knowledge - a new mutation - persuaded members of a particular clone to fuse with cells from another, and then to divide. That ingenious idea is good news for the novel gene, as it doubles its rate of spread, but is a lot less so for those who receive it, who are obliged to copy the extra DNA. At once, two factions emerge, one keen to force itself upon the other. Thus sex was invented.
Soon one contestant began to cheat. Large cells are expensive, but are better at dividing because they have more food reserves. Small cells are cheaper to make, but cannot afford to split. Their sole chance of success hence lies in fusion with a large cell. The first males had appeared on the scene. — Steve Jones

You try spending six months sitting at somebody's bedside, waiting for them to die and then tell me that the happy-ending love story isn't one of God's good gifts. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

God I'm in love, and it feels so good! — Veronica Brannon

The gods command that there can be only one king. But I swear that I am no better than a common soldier today, and you are as good as kings. Each man here is part of me. So what's left for the king to say? Only two words, but they are the two that your hearts want to
hear. Victory.And home!" Then his command cracked like a whip. "All together - move! — Deepak Chopra

Always write exactly what you're feeling at the exact moment when writing something like poetry or an emotional novel. Put yourself, pour all emotions into your work ... make yourself cry, feel joy if you are writing joyful things, feel lovey if it calls for it ... just put your heart and soul into all that you do ... then you will be a good writer when you can make whoever reads your work, feel. -Nina Jean Slack — Nina Jean Slack

I once owned a collection of 77 novels that won the Pulitzer. The only good novel of the bunch was The Grapes of Wrath. — Larry McMurtry

... The use of your gift for good is your responsibility. You must decide for yourself. — Thomas Sweeney

The fact is that if the writer's attention is on producing a work of art, a work that is good in itself, he is going to take great pains to control every excess, everything that does not contribute to this central meaning and design. He cannot indulge in sentimentality, in propagandizing, or in pornography and create a work of art, for all these things are excesses. They call attention to themselves and distract from the work as a whole. — Flannery O'Connor

Writing a novel is one of those modern rites of passage, I think, that lead us from an innocent world of contentment, drunkenness, and good humor, to a state of chronic edginess and the perpetual scanning of bank statements. — J.G. Ballard

Jeanne sensed herself becoming more depressed after tweeting. She felt lonely after all of her thoughts had left her and were now staring at her on the Internet. Jeanne sometimes felt fearful of posting her thoughts on twitter. After posting a thought to twitter she sometimes thought, "No, I should have saved that." Jeanne felt unsure as to why she would need to save her thoughts. Maybe she needed to somehow save up all of her thoughts like carnival tickets, and she would be able to one day trade them in for one big, good thing. She could possible trade them in for a giant stuffed animal with a disproportionately large head that is not a trademarked character but very similar looking to a trademarked character.

She thought that if she ever wrote a novel it would be made up of every thought she has ever had. She would title it "One Big Good Thing" even if it were small and bad. — Gabby Bess

No man that good-looking could be a bachelor. Life wasn't that kind. — Gaelen Foley

The novel succeeds on terms exclusive to literature. A good film succeeds on terms exclusive to the cinema. That's why so many bad novels can become good movies, like 'Jaws' or 'The Godfather.' — Alexander Payne

Well, when I am fifty-three or so I would like to write a novel as good as Persuasion but with a modern setting, of course. For the next thirty years or so I shall be collecting material for it. If anyone asks me what I work at, I shall say, 'Collecting material'. No one can object to that. — Stella Gibbons

If you always dreamed of writing a novel or a memoir, and you used to love to write, and were pretty good at it, will it break your heart if it turns out you never got around to it? If you wake up one day at eighty, will you feel nonchalant that something always took precedence over a daily commitment to discovering your creative spirit? If not
if this very thought fills you with regret
then what are you waiting for? — Anne Lamott

Is it possible to write a reverent novel," said Nassrin, "and to have it be good? ... — Azar Nafisi

I started a novel back in high school. It wasn't very good. It was the opposite of good. The writing itself wasn't too bad, and the characters were interesting. But the story was a mess, and it was full of fantasy cliches. Dwarf with an axe. Barbarian warrior. I don't ever think I'd bother finishing that. It's just not worth my time. — Patrick Rothfuss

The greatest multiplex in the universe is inside your mind, and the only ticket you need is a good, well-written novel. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Was it possible that the emotion of love had somehow made me more susceptible to fear? Does the noble emotion of love make us start valuing our own lives and the lives of our loved ones more so that the feeling of fear creeps into our mindset? — Vivek Pereira

To me, a book is a book. A novel is a novel, and you have hundreds of possibilities, options, and they may all be fine. Charles Dickens or Ingeborg Bachmann, Claude Simon or later writers. The one and only condition is that it has to be good: it has to have quality, substance, atmosphere. — Per Petterson

The child cannot too early learn to be a good citizen? I think this is questionable: citizenship is an adult affair. Let school and home teach the child to respect the laws and institutions of his country. For the time being that should suffice. To use the juvenile novel or biography to turn the child into an internationalist or an advocate of racial tolerance may be high-minded, but I would suggest that the child first be allowed to turn into a boy or girl. Pious Little Rollo is dead; the Good Little Citizen is replacing him. The moralistic literature of the last century tried to produce small paragons of virtue. How about our urge to manufacture small paragons of social consciousness? — Clifton Fadiman

I grew up in a working-class Catholic family in south Louisiana. I went to a state university. I taught literature, wrote a novel that was the novel I wanted to write, and got a couple of good reviews but no real traction. I had no idea how to get a job in TV. — Nic Pizzolatto

To me reading is an almost sacred activity and the great novel is its high mass.

The novel is so deeply powerful as an art form because of the investment of time and faith it demands.

A good novel can sweep you up, quarry you out, illuminate you and truly inhabit your life.

And, of course, although the writer composes the sentences of the novel the reader is a full participant in the imaginative process and far from a mere voyeur. — Gregory Day

Upright, she's slapped with the aroma of musk and sweat. It's the good hunky, 'shirtless man building a dollhouse for his daughter' kind of perspiration, not the 'he just mowed the lawn' kind of stench. — Sandy Ward Bell

Take a table and I'll join you in a second.'
When he walked away I did something I couldn't be scolded for doing.
I checked out his ass in his jeans and ... that looked good. — Stephanie Witter

Action is the pulse of any good story, but the character is the heart. If the action has no consequence to the character, the story loses heart. — Linda W. Yezak

It does no one any good to say their novel sucks if you don't have an idea how to make it better, how to approach it from different angles and make it work. It's obviously a subjective process, right? But the thing about subjectivity, at least in the classroom, is that you're banking on your professor's subjectivity to be both personal and professional - that he or she has some sense about the world outside the workshop. — Tod Goldberg

A good novel, one which entices the author as much as it beckons the reader. — W.J. Raymond

Good humour was miles behind a second cup of morning tea. It was too early for nonsense. — Zeenat Mahal

I don't see myself as a very important person. But I was the second woman to write a novel in Iran, and I have written most of the novels about Iranian women. In this way, maybe I have a good place in Iranian literature. — Shahrnush Parsipur

Every good story needs a good ending. Don't write the beginning of a novel without knowing the end of it. — A.D.Y. Howle

Judgments and secrets are what make a good novel. — Tobias Hill

The average detective story is probably no worse than the average novel, but you never see the average novel. It doesn't get published. The average
or only slightly above average
detective story does ... Whereas the good novel is not at all the same kind of book as the bad novel. It is about entirely different things. But the good detective story and the bad detective story are about exactly the same things, and they are about them in very much the same way. — Raymond Chandler

Ford Maddox Ford's 'The Good Soldier' is my favourite novel. I first read it in the 1950s and have read it about 20 times since. It's possibly the best-constructed book in the English language. — Ruth Rendell

She described how Camus's aphorism "One must imagine Sisyphus happy" helps her fight back against unproductive feelings of meaninglessness.
If we consider, like Camus, Sisyphus at the foot of his mountain, we can see that he is smiling. He is content in his task of defying the Gods, the journey more important than the goal. To achieve a beginning, a middle, an end, a meaning to the chaos of creation - that's more than any deity seems to manage: But it's what writers do. So I tidy the desk, even polish it up a bit, stick some flowers in a vase and start.
As I begin a novel I remind myself as ever of Camus's admonition that the purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself. And even while thinking, well, fat chance! I find courage, reach for the heights, and if the rock keeps rolling down again so it does. What the hell, start again. Rewrite. Be of good cheer. Smile on, Sisyphus! — Fay Weldon

Good art can come out of thieves, bootleggers, or horse swipes. People really are afraid to find out just how much hardship and poverty they can stand. They are afraid to find out how tough they are. Nothing can destroy the good writer. The only thing that can alter the good writer is death. Good ones don't have time to bother with success or getting rich. Success is feminine and like a woman; if you cringe before her, she will override you. So the way to treat her is to show her the back of your hand. Then maybe she will do the crawling. — William Faulkner

I'm good with a grill. I like to make cheeseburgers - I once read in a David Goodis crime novel that you're only supposed to flip a burger once. — Noah Baumbach

When I sit down to write a novel, I am exploring my own relationship with God, with the struggle between good and evil, my own purpose. — Ted Dekker

There is only one motive for writing a novel: to be published and read. To me there is no distinction between the mystery novel and the novel, only between good books and bad books. A good book takes the reader into a new world of experience; it is an experiment. A bad book, unless the writing is inept, reinforces the intransigent attitude of the reader not to experiment with a new world. Since there are criminals and psychopaths and sociopaths in all my novels they are in a way psychological thrillers. — John Franklin Bardin

The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short. — Arthur Schopenhauer

If you want an MMO, there are plenty out there. The difference with a single player game is that in the same way you lose yourself in a good novel, you can lose yourself in a single player story. You see it in all these games, where you can fill your house with turnips or decorate your armour with a dragon skull. — Marc Laidlaw

I think romance is maligned in large part because at first glance, love seems so pedestrian. It's all around us. It's in books and songs and movies and on billboards, so how could it really hold literary value? But what people tend to forget is that the search for love - for the simple idea that there is someone out there who will see us for who we are and accept us isn't trite. It's a huge part of our lives. And it's an enormous part of our dreams.
There are so many fabulous romances out there - there's something for everyone. I really believe that. And I believe that most of the people who look down their noses at the genre haven't ever read a romance novel. I think that if they did, they'd be really surprised by how good great romance can be. — Sarah MacLean

That sounds good. But I don't like to be tied down in one place. I want to be free-to go to where I want, when I want, and be able to think about whatever I want. — Haruki Murakami

If I had to rank my skills, I have a long way to go before I can write a good graphic novel. — Ted Rall

Life," Garp wrote, "is sadly not structured like a good old-fashioned novel. Instead an end occurs when those who are meant to peter out have petered out. All that is left is memory. But even a nihilist has memory. — John Irving

When we're done with it, we may find - if it's a good novel - that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having meet a new face, crossed a street we've never crossed before. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I always wondered why I didn't try to seduce you, since you're so good-looking, more appealing than any woman. — Debra Strattford

I think predictability is built into any good novel in some way - you begin reading Anna Karenina and you know pretty much what's going to happen at the end. But that doesn't mean you know what's going to happen in the middle. For me, it's that sense of what happens in the middle that's important. — Scarlett Thomas

Just about everything significant in my life happened after I passed forty. I was a housewife and mother, but yearned to be a writer. I worked at my writing whenever I could snatch a moment, and I assembled several manuscripts. I was just about forty when my first novel, East Wind, West Wind, was published. Then a few months later came The Good Earth. My career was launched at last, and it has given me the richest possible satisfaction — Pearl S. Buck

In a novel, if you're any good, you don't just have good people or bad people. You have complicated people. You have real people. — Salman Rushdie

I Need a Good Book

I need a good story.
I need a good book.
The kind that explodes
Off the shelf.
I need some good writing,
Alive and exciting,
To contemplate all by myself.

I need a good novel,
I need a good read.
I probably need
Two or three.
I need a good tale
Of love and betrayal
Or perhaps an adventure at sea.

I need a good saga.
I need a good yarn.
A momentous and mightily
Or slight one.
But with thousands and thousands
And thousands of books,
I need someone to tell me
The right one.

-John Lithgow — John Lithgow

Time lost to pointless delay can never be regained. It is the most reprehensible kind of theft. Why was it that men did not grasp this simple fact? Money comes and goes and comes again, and knowledge can be acquired and forgotten and rediscovered, but time once lost is lost for good, each passing second irretrievable. — John Pipkin

I think it's especially important for an editor to say what he's enjoying. For a novelist to be told, midstream, what he's doing right can actually influence the unwritten parts of a novel in a positive way - praise helps a writer know what's good about what he's written, what's interesting and exciting, and what to work for in writing the conclusion. — Donna Tartt

I usually start writing a novel that I then abandon. When I say abandon, I don't think any writer ever abandons anything that they regard as even a half-good sentence. So you recycle. I mean, I can hang on to a sentence for several years and then put it into a book that's completely different from the one it started in. — Kate Atkinson

When writing a novel, that's pretty much entirely what life turns into: 'House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day. — Neil Gaiman

I always try to give good ratings to books I have read unless it is really bad. Being a writer I know how a bad rating feels. Sometimes it is better to encourage a writer rather than discourage them. After all the next book they write could be a World Renown novel like Harry Potter. — William Roach

Good fiction must be entertaining, but what makes fiction special - and True - is that the realness of a novel allows it to carry a larger message. — Jerry B. Jenkins

A good notion for a novel is far too precious to waste; it must be caught the moment it flashes into mental view, or it will escape to the brain of some other writer who really doesn't deserve it. — Piers Anthony

Do you plan on marrying Charles?"
She shook her head.
"Good. I wouldn't want to shoot him, but I would."
... Finding Promise — Scarlett Dunn