Poe Novel Quotes & Sayings

We want characters - characters man - something novel - out of the way. We are wearied with everlasting sameness. Come drink! the wine will brighten your wits. — Edgar Allan Poe

A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no words written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. The idea of the tale has been presented unblemished because undisturbed: and this is an end unattainable by the novel. Undue brevity is just as exceptionable here as in the poem; but undue length is yet more to be avoided. — Edgar Allan Poe

By late accounts from Rotterdam, that city seems to be in a high state of philosophical excitement. Indeed, phenomena have there occurred of a nature so completely unexpected
so entirely novel
so utterly at variance with preconceived opinions
as to leave no doubt on my mind that long ere this all Europe is in an uproar, all physics in a ferment, all reason and astronomy together by the ears. — Edgar Allan Poe

My English teachers gave me a copy of Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale' when I left high school, which has always been very special to me - it was the novel that introduced me to dystopian fiction. I'm also influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, Dickens, John Wyndham and Middle English dream-visions. — Samantha Shannon

Daemonic compulsiveness can kill as easily as it can save.
The true novelist must be at once driven and indifferent. Van
Gogh never sold a painting in his life. Poe came close with
poetry and fiction, selling very little. Drivenness only helps if
it forces the writer not to suicide but to the making of splendid
works of art, allowing him indifference to whether or not the
novel sells, whether or not it's appreciated. Drivenness is trouble
for both the novelist and his friends; but no novelist, I
think, can succeed without it. Along with the peasant in the
novelist, there must be a man with a whip. — John Gardner

Yet I am learning — Michelangelo Buonarroti

If at first you don't succeed, get a bigger hammer. — Alan Lewis

People talk and rumors follow," I said.
"Most people claim that only a person possessed of the devil could write such horror."
"And what do you think?"
"You are an angel to me, Eddy, but never bet the devil your head."
"That would make a great title for a story," I observed. — Andrew Barger

In the tale proper
where there is no space for development of character or for great profusion and variety of incident
mere construction is, of course, far more imperatively demanded than in the novel. — Edgar Allan Poe

Baseball is more than a game. It's like life played out on a field. — Juliana Hatfield

Go take the mother's soul, and learn three truths: Learn What dwells in man, What is not given to man , and What men live by . When thou hast learnt these things, thou shalt return to heaven. — Leo Tolstoy

During difficult times, it's best to cut down on sweets like cookies, cake and candy. Satisfy your sweet tooth with fruit to help prevent blood sugar dips and spikes. — Karen Salmansohn

Only now, years after having read though the works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Scott, Poe, Balzac did he realise that even the most prolific writer created only one novel; throw away the individual bindings and the whole of each man's writing constituted one book: the true and complete portrait of himself. An artist had one thing to say, and one only; he might flail about, seek new techniques, forms, colour combinations, subjects, but intrinsically he would always paint the same canvas, write the same book. — Irving Stone

I love chapbooks. They're in some ways the ideal form in which to publish and read poems. You can read 19 poems in a way you can't sit down and read 60 to 70 pages of poems. — Robert Morgan

One thing I incorporated in my novel 'The Poe Shadow' was the little-known fact that documents show Poe inherited a slave and decided to free him. — Matthew Pearl

The same walls you think you're using to protect yourself are the same walls blocking your blessings. — Stephan Labossiere

I don't think the drums are a solo instrument. Drums are there to set the beat for the music. — Keith Moon

Destiny is always dark. — George Herbert

After reading Edgar Allan Poe. Something the critics have not noticed: a new literary world pointing to the literature of the 20th Century. Scientific miracles, fables on the pattern A+ B, a clear-sighted, sickly literature. No more poetry but analytic fantasy. Something monomaniacal. Things playing a more important part than people; love giving away to deductions and other forms of ideas, style, subject and interest. The basis of the novel transferred from the heart to the head, from the passion to the idea, from the drama to the denouement. — Jules De Goncourt