Novels Quotes

The only regret I will have in dying is if it is not for love.

He remembered how on nights like these, clusters of Berlin policemen and Allied soldiers used to gather under the arc lights, stamping their feet, cursing the cold, fidgeting their rifles from shoulder to shoulder, puffing clouds of frosted breath into each other's faces. He remembered how the tanks waited, growling to keep their engines warm, their gun barrels picking targets on the other side, feigning strength.

People never notice anything.

People never notice anything.

She should have done science, not spent all her time with her head in novels. Novels gave you a completely false idea about life, they told lies and they implied there were endings when in reality there were no endings, everything just went on and on and on.

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

I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or at other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter.

Yes—oh dear yes—the novel tells a story.

Writing a novel is a tiny candle in a dark, swirling world. It brings light and warmth and hope to the lucky few who, against insufferable odds and despite a juggernaut of irritations, find themselves in the right place to hold it. Blow it out, so our eyes will not be drawn to its power. Extinguish it so we can get some sleep. I plan to quit writing novels myself, sometime...

Truth is a well-known pathological liar. It invariably turns out to be Fiction wearing a fancy frock. Self-proclaimed Fiction, on the other hand, is entirely honest. You can tell this, because it comes right out and says, "I'm a Liar," right there on the dust jacket.

My novels offer an extreme hypothesis which future events may disprove — or confirm. They're in the nature of long-range weather forecasts.

Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century.

Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.

I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

Even now, my ideal for writing fiction is to put Dostoevsky and Chandler together in one book. That’s my goal.

[My wife] is my first reader, every time I write a book. I rely on her. She’s a kind of partner to me. It’s like Scott Fitzgerald—for him, Zelda was the first reader.

I’m not intelligent. I’m not arrogant. I’m just like the people who read my books. I used to have a jazz club, and I made the cocktails and I made the sandwiches. I didn’t want to become a writer—it just happened. It’s a kind of gift, you know, from the heavens. So I think I should be very humble.

I don’t like the realistic style, myself. I prefer a more surrealistic style. But with Norwegian Wood, I made up my mind to write a hundred percent realistic novel. I needed that experience.

Why the fiction of ideas should be so neglected is beyond me. I can’t explain it, except in terms of intellectual snobbery.

The people seemed nearly ostentatious about minding their own business.