Story Of O Novel Quotes & Sayings

O matter how much research you do, or invention you do, whether it's a character from a novel, a completely invented character or someone who actually existed, it's a work of faction. By the very fact you only have an hour and a half or two hours to tell a story, you're telescoping events and it is, in the end, a work of imagination. — Cate Blanchett

Few novels truly deserve the description 'rollicking' in the way Mary Novik's Conceit does. A hearty, boiling stew of a novel, served up in rich old-fashioned story-telling. Novik lures her readers into the streets of a bawdy seventeenth-century London with a nudge and a wink and keeps them there with her infectious love of detail and character. A raunchy, hugely entertaining read that will leave you at once satiated and hungry for more. — Gail Anderson-Dargatz

Dastardly devious, cleverly conceived, and just a whole lot of fun to read, DEATH PERCEPTION is Lee Allen Howard on fire and at his finest. Rife with winsome weirdness, it's like the mutant stepchild of Carl Hiaasen and Stephen King, mixing a truly unique paranormal coming-of-age story with a quirky cast of offbeat noir characters into a novel that's simply unforgettable ... and hilariously original. A supernatural crime story, blazing with creative intrigue ... don't miss it. — Michael Arnzen

I've always enjoyed that kind of thing - thinking about the production of narrative and why it is that when we read a novel, we don't notice the fact that someone who might be very close-mouthed or tight-lipped is perfectly willing to tell us a story in 600 or 700 pages. — Matthew Tobin Anderson

The thing I have learned through the years is that one idea 'doth' not a novel make. A novel must be several seemingly unrelated ideas that somehow magically come together to create the fabric of the story. — Katherine Paterson

There is one final point, the point that separates a true multivolume work from a short story, a novel, or a series. The ending of the final volume should leave the reader with the feeling that he has gone through the defining circumstances of Main Character's life. The leading character in a series can wander off into another book and a new adventure better even than this one. Main Character cannot, at the end of your multivolume work. (Or at least, it should seem so.) His life may continue, and in most cases it will. He may or may not live happily ever after. But the problems he will face in the future will not be as important to him or to us, nor the summers as golden. — Gene Wolfe

Romantic fiction, in the broader sense, can be any novel that has a love story somewhere in it. It can be a mystery or a historical novel, as long as it has this very strong romantic thread running through it. — Susanna Kearsley

Few literary depictions of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake match the intensity and visceral power of those in Flacco's gripping first novel. The author's screenwriting talent shines in this story of the earth's destructive power and humanity's moral depravity. The emerging maniacal personality, revealed in increasingly gruesome and venomous detail, rivals the Ripper.Dickens meets Hannibal Lecter. Brace yourself. — William Bernhardt

[Kafka] transformed the profoundly antipoetic material of a highly bureaucratized society into the great poetry of the novel; he transformed a very ordinary story of a man who cannot obtain a promised job ... into myth, into epic, into a kind of beauty never before seen. — Milan Kundera

I always think first about the nature of the story. When I had the idea for 'The Namesake,' I felt that it had to be a novel - it couldn't work as a story. — Jhumpa Lahiri

Power to Laura Boudreau-McPherson-O'Brien: Laura's Story is about a woman finding her place in the world, and her voice, while struggling against poverty, societal limitations, and at times, herself. Anyone who has had to fight for what she believes in or come up against odds be they external or internal, will relate to this book. Women will feel strength and will realize that though this novel is a work of fiction, it is authentic in its aim to give a voice to many women's untold stories. Happy International Women's Day everyone! — Julie Larade

It's difficult for me to have a large story, a very large story - a novel is a large story. I'm used to writing and doing these little miniature paintings. — Sandra Cisneros

The most-asked question when someone describes a novel, movie or short story to a friend probably is, 'How does it end?' Endings carry tremendous weight with readers; if they don't like the ending, chances are they'll say they didn't like the work. Failed endings are also the most common problems editors have with submitted works. — Nancy Kress

There's a difference between doing memoir and writing a novel. If I had put the story of the boy killing my dog - and that was Eric also, what a little monster he was! - in a novel, even if I took it directly from life, it would be fiction. — Paul Auster

A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film. — Lorrie Moore

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

Hitchcock's debut novel introduces 14-year-old Jessie Pearl, who endures more than her fair share of hardships, beginning with the death of her mother. Opening in 1922, the story follows the daily activities on the family's North Carolina tobacco farm. ...Hitchcock's story is gently and lovingly written, with elements drawn from her own family history. Its detailed honesty about the particular struggles of the period, especially for strong women (Maude, a no-nonsense midwife, is particularly memorable), is significant.
- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY — Publishers Weekly

(The short story) is a form that has all the power of the novel - some would say more - but none of the self-importance. — Joseph O'Connor

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

The thing is that my first novel, which was basically a mystery adventure story, won quite an important award in Spain for young adult fiction, and because of this it became a very successful book, and right now it's some sort of a standard title, it's read widely in many high schools in Spain, so I think, in a way, I was a victim of my own success in the field of young adult fiction, because it was never my own natural register. I never intended to write that kind of fiction, but I became very successful at it. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The short story can be hot and sweet or hot and fierce. You get it in one sitting or you don't get it. It's like a shore break. It happens quickly, and is right there in front of you, menacing you. First you're looking at the shore break, and then if you don't back up, it's on you. The novel is the long, low wave that you ride south from the Arctic Circle. It's powerful, but its power accumulates over a very long time as it rolls towards the reef. — Stephanie Vaughn

Writing a poem is like having an affair, a one-night stand; a short story is a romance, a relationship; a novel is a marriage-one has to be cunning, devise compromises, and make sacrifices. — Amos Oz

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

Fiction operates through the senses, and I think one reason that people find it so difficult to write stories is that they forget how much time and patience is required to convince through the senses. No reader who doesn't actually experience, who isn't made to feel, the story is going to believe anything the fiction writer merely tells him. The first and most obvious characteristic of fiction is that it deals with reality through what can be seen, heard, smelt, tasted, and touched. — Flannery O'Connor

Always in the short story there is this sense of outlawed figures wandering about the fringes of society ... As a result there is in the short story at its most characteristic something we do not often find in the novel
an intense awareness of human loneliness. — Frank O'Connor

Our lives are a novel being written. We are its author. Every action we encounter and every person we meet has a role and a place in our ultimate story. It is in our control to decide the level of how, who and what impacts us and how large a role we decide to assign each. — Mark W. Boyer

A memory came to me. One time, in middle school, a famous author came to talk to our class and give a writing workshop. One of the things she told us about writing a novel was that the story should be about what the main character wants. Dorothy wants to go home to Kansas. George Milton wants a farm of his own. Amelia Sedley wants to marry her darling George and live happily ever after. The end of the story, according to the famous author, is when the character either gests what he wants or realizes he's never going to get it. Or sometimes, she said, like Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind, realizes she doesn't actually want what she thought she wanted all along.
pg. 324 of Bewitching — Alex Flinn

I don't have a lot of time. I can give a poem a couple of lines, a short story a paragraph, and a novel a few pages, then if I can stop reading without a sense of loss, I do, and I go on to something else. — Flannery O'Connor

I think that too often we, film directors, think that a big epic novel and feature film are the same. It's a lie. A feature film is much closer to a short story actually. — Pirjo Honkasalo

If I can give a young author any advice, whatsoever, never let anyone announce the film sale of your first novel. Film rights are sold to almost every novel, but it shouldn't be the lead story in your first engagement with the press. Then you end up getting reviews like "a novel made for the screen" and things like that. — William Monahan

Memory retains some things and discards others. I remember every detail of some scenes from my childhood and adolescence, by no means the most important ones. I remember some people and have totally forgotten others. Memory is like the headlights of a car at night, which fall now on a tree, now on a hut, now on a man. People (usually writers) who tell the story of their lives as a continuous and detailed whole generally fill in the gaps with conjecture; it is hard to tell where genuine reminiscence ends and the novel begins. — Ilya Ehrenburg

ANTHONY DOERR is the author of the story collections Memory Wall and The Shell Collector, the novel About Grace, and the memoir Four Seasons in Rome. He has won numerous prizes both in the United States and overseas, including four O. Henry Prizes, three Pushcart Prizes, the Rome Prize, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, the National Magazine Award for fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Story Prize. Raised in Cleveland, Doerr lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife and two sons. — Anthony Doerr

Unfortunately, the story wasn't a novel, and it wasn't fiction. — Aleatha Romig

Because Trickster is looking to stir things up, to scramble the conventions, to undo history and received notions of what is art and what is not, to sing for his supper, to find and lose himself in the act of entertaining. Trickster haunts the boundary lines, the margins, the secret shelves between the sections in the bookstore. And that is where, if it wants to renew itself in the way that the novel has done so often in its long history, the short story must, inevitably, go. — Michael Chabon

Life is travelled at a pace one decides for themselves — Chandra Sekhar

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

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

With 'Darkly Dreaming Dexter,' we as a group of writers had to take a rather thin novel and spread it out over the course of 12 episodes, and not only 12 episodes, but lay in story for everyone that's going to take you through five years. — Melissa Rosenberg

I would say I'm a storyteller first, but game making is very wrapped up in how I think of story. If I were to have a story idea, and I decided to write a novel with it instead, I'd have to very consciously de-couple it from gamedom - for example, deliberately add in things that could not be represented in a game scene. — Jane Jensen

I began reading Harper Lee's novel in the skimpy shade of a pine outside my grandmother's house, fat beagles pressing against me, begging for attention, ignored. At dark, I kept reading, first on the couch, a bologna sandwich in one hand, then in my bed, by the light of a 60-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling on an orange drop cord. When my mother came in from her job as a maid and unplugged my chandelier, I replayed the story in my head until it was crowded out by dreams. I woke the next morning, smelling biscuits, and reached for the book again. — Rick Bragg

Sometimes when one cannot stand the story or novel one
is working on, it helps to write something else - a different
story or novel, or essays venting one's favorite peeves, or exercises
aimed at passing the time and incidentally polishing up
one's craft. The best way in the world for breaking a writer's
block is to write a lot. Jabbering away on paper, one gets
tricked into feeling interested, all at once, in something one is
saying, and behold, the magic waters are flowing again. Often
it helps to work on a journal, since that allows the writer to
write about those things that most interest him, yet frees him
of the pressure of achievement and encourages him to develop
a more natural, more personal style. — John Gardner

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

Behind every novel is a greater story of how it came to be published. — T.L. Rese

Every story we remember is a novel. Novels make things more universal. — Dave Eggers

By running longer it's like I can physically exhaust that portion of my discontent. It also makes me realize again how weak I am, how limited my abilities are. I become aware, physically, of these low points. And one of the results of running a little farther than usual is that I become that much stronger. If I'm angry, I direct that anger toward myself. If I have a frustrating experience, I use that to improve myself. That's the way I've always lived. I quietly absorb the things I'm able to, releasing them later, and in as changed a form as possible, as part of the story line in a novel. — Haruki Murakami

Mysteries include so many things: the noir novel, espionage novel, private eye novels, thrillers, police procedurals. But the pure detective story is where there's a detective and a criminal who's committed a murder and leaves clues for the detective and the careful reader to find. — Otto Penzler