Quotes About A Good Novel

#1. 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

#2. I have always argued, in a good novel, interesting things happen to interesting people.

Guy Gavriel Kay

#3. When I give myself over to a good novel, I surrender to the truths fashioned from one writer's heart, mind and soul. I do not waste a nanosecond wondering whether what I'm reading 'really happened.'

Julia Glass

#4. She could not see what good it would do anyone to read a novel of this kind. Yet she was writing it.

Doris Lessing

#5. Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.

Barbara Kingsolver

#6. I have a really good idea for a novel and would like to just kind of try my hand at fiction. I'm starting to kind of get a really good body of work going from a literary standpoint. As long as the audience is there, man, I'll keep cranking them out.

Corey Taylor

#7. I wasn't the demonstrative type. I didn't say I love you all the time, and I wasn't girlish or giggly. I hated shopping in pairs and preferred staying home with a good romance novel than a girls' night out. But I figured sometimes you have to meet someone halfway.

C.D. Reiss

#8. Deciding to write a novel about something - as opposed to finding you are writing a novel around something - sounds to me like a good evocation of writer's block.

Martin Amis

#9. I think that if the novel's task is to describe where we find ourselves and how we live now, the novelist must take a good, hard look at the most central facts of contemporary life - technology and science.

Richard Powers

#10. A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige throughbeing mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.

Rebecca West

#11. A guava tree in bloom, for instance, lost in the pages of a good novel, can bring delight with its fictional perfume to any number of real rooms.

Jose Eduardo Agualusa

#12. The good thing about writing a novel is that you're creating an imaginary world and can take a break when you need to.

Liane Moriarty

#13. There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book. ( ... )
A good novel editor is invisible.

Terri Windling

#14. As the sweaty, alcohol fuming bodies press in on me from all directions I decide that my ideal of a good time is reading a good novel, alone

Rita Stradling

#15. Recently SCHISMATRIX became my first novel to come out in Finland. Perhaps there's a quality in a good translation that can't be captured with the original.

Bruce Sterling

#16. There are a lot of very good New York novels, but there's no single all-encompassing novel, the way you could look at any number of Dickens books and say we know London as a result of that.

Pete Hamill

#17. Most people can start a short story or a novel. If you're a writer, you can finish them. Finish enough of them, and you may be good enough to be publishable.

Neil Gaiman

#18. It is clear that a novel cannot be too bad to be worth publishing ... It certainly is possible for a novel to be too good to be worth publishing.

George Bernard Shaw

#19. A good approach is to allow one dream per novel. Then, in the final revision, go back and get rid of that, too.

Howard Mittelmark

#20. The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

Jane Austen

#21. A good biography is the richest experience. When you watch a TV series together with someone is like being in a novel with them.

Darcey Steinke

#22. It's like people don't only look good when they look like a magazine. People can be aesthetically beautiful in the way sunsets and leaves and things are.

Laura Tims

#23. I think a good novel can be a doorstop to despair. I also think the real bravery comes with those who prepared to go through that door and look at the world in all its grime and torment, and still find something of value, no matter how small.

Colum McCann

#24. I suppose it's why I usually loved to get lost in a good romance novel, because it would let me escape into the fantasy that I hoped to make come true one day. -Kate, Zack

Sawyer Bennett

#25. Good Lord. His appearance was nearly a caricature of the dark and brooding hero from every gothic novel.

Tarun Shanker

#26. Probably writers should forget what it was like to write the last novel, and the one before that, and the one before that, or we should all be plumbers. It must be good to be a plumber. Everyone is happy to see you, and no one reviews your work.

Susan Fromberg Schaeffer

#27. 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

#28. Once I had started, I discovered the secret pleasure of writing a novel. It's such an immersive, deep commitment. With short stories, you're continually having to start again from scratch, but with a novel you only need one good idea every few years.

Debra Dean

#29. I couldn't decide on a title for my first novel and my editor came up with Everything Good Will Come. After that, I thought I should name my own books.A Bit of Difference seems just right.

Sefi Atta

#30. Mattie, I'm sorry to drag you away." "Don't worry about it. It's late. My mother always said nothing good happens after midnight." I barked out a surprised laugh. "Your mother, clearly, is not a Sidhe.

Belinda M. Gordon

#31. It's good to go off and write a novel, but don't stop doing writing practice.

Natalie Goldberg

#32. Edward was good at finding Emil's most vulnerable places. Some people are like that. Siblings maybe most of all

Frances Greenslade

#33. You need a good James Clavell novel, I think, to make a good miniseries.

Noah Hawley

#34. I believe a novel must first of all be a good story. My hope is that the spiritual message is woven in so well, is such a part of the fabric of the story and of the characters' lives, that it is subtle but meaningful. This is difficult to do well and is something I constantly endeavor to improve.

Julie Klassen

#35. You can't write ... on the strength of influence. You can only write a good story or a good novel by yourself.

Richard Ford

#36. 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

#37. It would ha' been a good deal easier, if ye'd only been a witch.

Diana Gabaldon

#38. If you want to write the next great novel, but you think, No, this won't work because no one will buy it or it won't be any good, then you talk yourself out of taking a risk.

John Tesh

#39. 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

#40. A cardinal principle of good fiction [is]: the theme and the plot of a novel must be integrated - as thoroughly integrated as mind and body or thought and action in a rational view of man.

Ayn Rand

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

Ted Rall

#42. 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

#43. The first novel I wrote was a monster - clocking in at 180,000 words - but it died a death, a death it deserved. It was called 'The Gods First Make Mad.' It was a good title, but it was the only good thing about the book. I didn't let that put me off.

Wilbur Smith

#44. I don't want to make a tea set. I want to make crystal, as the wonderful Billy Wiseass would put it. That poor bastard has it good: he's never experienced love. It'll be easy for him to write a romance novel.

Danilo Kis

#45. 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

#46. There are many things behind a good novel, but in particular there is a lot of work - a lot of patience, a lot of stubbornness, and a critical spirit.

Mario Vargas-Llosa

#47. 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

#48. Sometimes a girl's gotta be bad to be good.

Murder in the Dog Park

Jill Yesko

#49. In his exciting debut novel, Jerel Law transports readers to a place where supernatural forces of good and evil collide. Young readers will be entertained and inspired by Spirit Fighter. I heartily recommend it.

Robert Whitlow

#50. I don't like jokes in speeches. I do like wit and humor. A joke is to humor what pornography is to erotic language in a good novel.

James C. Humes

#51. 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

#52. The mental state I'm in is completely different, but the act of trying to write is the same. I mean, in all instances you try to write good sentences. But in a novel you're free to do whatever you want, and in the autobiographical works you can't make things up.

Paul Auster

#53. I am obsessed with story. I had a late awakening in life. In college was the first time that I understood what you could do with a story and what a good novel is - literary value and subtext and irony and everything.

Shane Carruth

#54. Whether your audience is in a sweaty basement club or nestled in a favourite armchair, good money has been paid, and attention has got to be grabbed if you are not to be heckled off the stage or find your novel discarded in favour of the latest volume of 'Fifty Shades of Whatever.'

Mark Billingham

#55. I had never had a big opinion for myself. I had always thought I'd be a fuck up, that I'd be disappointed like always by life and people. But at this very moment, I knew it. I wasn't a good man, not well-adjusted. - Nolan

Stephanie Witter

#56. Ideas can come while reading a good novel.

Ben Van Berkel

#57. I love to read about anger. A "feel bad" book always makes me feel good. And no other novel in the history of literature is more depressing than Christina Stead's The Man Who Loved Children.

John Waters

#58. A lot of people have trouble with their second novel - the dreaded sophomore jinx. I wrote three books in between the two novels, and they just weren't very good.

Claire Cameron

#59. For me, a good YA novel is the best kind of comfort food.

Hallie Ephron

#60. My paintings have gotten to be pretty popular and I've taken a little bit more interest in painting the last few years. In fact, my novel that I wrote not too long ago, 'The Hornet's Nest,' I painted the cover picture for it and I do a good bit of painting now.

Jimmy Carter

#61. It would not be a good place for the heroine of a modern novel to stay at. The heroine of a modern novel is always "divinely tall," and she is ever "drawing herself up to her full height." At the "Barley Mow" she would bump her head against the ceiling each time she did this.

Jerome K. Jerome

#62. I think there's a joy to be had in taking readers where they just don't want to go. If you are writing a properly realist novel, then don't blink. Why not see something for what it is and render it truthfully? I find it a good way of going about writing - not to blink.

Neel Mukherjee

#63. May the next man in McKenna's life be one of those heroes in a romance novel - rich, good-looking and perfect in every way.

Lauren Blakely

#64. You didn't loses something that means everything to you, you didn't take good care of it so it went a away

Ayah

#65. 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

#66. We all know that small cars are good for us. But so is cod liver oil. And jogging. I want to drive around in a Terminator, not the heroine in an E. M. Forster novel.

Jeremy Clarkson

#67. Advice from a Romance Writer: Guys, make your woman feel pretty even on an 'off' day. Trust me, good things will come of it.

Michelle M. Pillow

#68. Remember that a good football novel has to have the same ingredients as any other good novel: drama, convincing and interesting characters, a strong story-line, and some kind of magic in the writing.

Mal Peet

#69. I had been a student in Vienna, and one of the neat little things I had found out was about that zoo. It was a good debut novel for me to have published. I was 26 or 27 when it was published. I already had a kid and would soon have a second.

John Irving

#70. I love print fiction, but sometimes when I'm reading a good graphic novel or manga, I find myself envying those who work in an illustrated format.

Jane Lindskold

#71. It's got a lot more room for nuance and an assumption that people have started from the beginning. 'Bloodline' ends up being like a really good novel.

Ben Mendelsohn

#72. Where do you think my new novel is? In the waste basket. I can see myself that it's no good on earth, and when a loving author realizes this, what would be the judgment of a critical public?

Jean Webster

#73. A whole bunch of agents and editors looked at my stories, and they all said, in effect, 'You're a pretty good writer and you should probably get these published; when you grow up and write a novel, get in touch.'

Bob Shacochis

#74. A good novel takes the reader into the heart of another person. It lands you smack into the life and times of someone else.

Mark Rubinstein

#75. Nothing good gets written without the writer suffering along the way, in my opinion. Writing should be a pleasure, but unless you feel almost broken many, many times in the journey to a novel, you haven't pushed yourself hard enough.

Mohsin Hamid

#76. 'The Good Soldier' is an odd and maybe even unique book. That it is a masterpiece, almost a perfect novel, comes as a repeated surprise even to readers who have read it before.

Jane Smiley

#77. I stopped buying Sunday papers about 15 years ago, because you'd buy handfuls of them, and what you got, because the hard news comes from so many other channels, was opinion pieces. You're better off spending the money on a good novel.

Gerry Adams

#78. I tell writers not to think about writing short stories or novels. Just write one good scene. And then a novel becomes a bunch of good scenes stacked on top of each other.

Joe Hill

#79. I've seen enough cowboys in my life to know I don't want one for a husband."
...Victoria
"Every good man I know is a cowboy."

Scarlett Dunn

#80. I don't much live my life as if I was living in a Raymond Chandler novel, which is probably a good thing.

William Gibson

#81. A good novel is an indivisible sum: every scene, sequence and passage of a good novel has to involve, contribute to and advance all three of its major attributes: theme, plot, characterization.

Ayn Rand

#82. 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

#83. Many critics, when trying to praise a short-story collection, will say that it has the heft and scope of a good novel. But for me, one of the highest compliments you can pay a novel is to say that it has the rich texture and eloquent detail of a good story collection.

Gary Krist

#84. But once an idea for a novel seizes a writer ... well, it's like an inner fire that at first warms you and makes you feel good but then begins to eat you alive, burn you up from within. You can't just walk away from the fire; it keeps burning. The only way to put it out is to write the book.

Dean Koontz

#85. A good novel is worth more then the best scientific study.

Saul Bellow

#86. A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

G.K. Chesterton

#87. I didn't have a list of things I should do this year, next year, find a good novel, sign two stars and make a deal - because I think cinema should come from cinema. I never adapted anything. Beautiful books are beautiful books, that's it. I don't know why we should transform them.

Agnes Varda

#88. I am not an academic who happens to have written a novel. I am a novelist who happens to be quite good academically.

A.S. Byatt

#89. Having been an editor for more than a decade, I thought I had a good idea of how much work was involved in writing a novel. I was wrong! Writing is a lot harder than I ever imagined - but worth it.

Julie Klassen

#90. 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

#91. I just finished a novel called 'Exult,' by Joe Quirk, last night. It's about hang gliding. I liked his first book, too, 'The Ultimate Rush.' I now know that I never, ever, ever want to go hang gliding, so that's good.

Christopher Moore

#92. Was love ever easy for anyone? If less complicated, would this make it less appreciated? Perhaps love was difficult for good reason. Perhaps everything on God's green earth was the result of a flawless plan, even that which seemed most muddled.

Roy L. Pickering Jr.

#93. 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

#94. Nobody ever wrote to me saying"you know ender's game was a pretty good book, but you know what it really needs a n introduction!" ... so be assured the novel stands on its own, and if you skip this intro and go straight to the story, i not only won't stand in your way i'll even agree with you!

Orson Scott Card

#95. A good novel cannot be too long nor a bad novel too short.

Ellen Glasgow

#96. A good-enough novel violently written now is better than a perfect novel meticulously written never.

Elizabeth Gilbert

#97. 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

#98. A good book changes for you every few years because you are in a different place in your own life. That's a sign of a good novel. Not only will two different readers get something different but so will a single reader at different points in his life.

Alan Lightman

#99. Never once did I think you were less than a good person.

Veronica Purcell

#100. A good novel editor is invisible.

Terri Windling