Novel Writing Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about Novel Writing

Novel Writing Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Novel Writing quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

The hardest thing about writing a novel is getting it published. — Marianne Cushing

[A young adult novel] ends not with happily ever after, but at a new beginning, with the sense of a lot of life yet to be lived. — Richard Peck

I wish every American explored the importance of novel writing, identity, honesty, character and place in fresh-ass ways. — Kiese Laymon

I always knew writing a novel was a great thing. — James Salter

I don't talk about my books while I'm writing them: not even my husband knows what a novel's about until it's done. — Sarah Dessen

When you are writing a novel, you aren't making it up. The story is already there. You just have to find it. — Thomas Harris

One of the notebooks was for musings and pep talks. ... The other notebooks were for writing out the novel the way authors had done for centuries. — Gail Godwin

Oh you know, I've been writing a novel. — Jarvis Cocker

To write a novel, you need an iron butt. — Richard M. Nixon

A novel is no different than graffiti in a bathroom stall, it's just more pretentious. — Christy Leigh Stewart

To remain pure, a novel has to cast a moral puzzle. Anything else is mere negotiation. — Anita Brookner

In my experience, writing a novel tends to create its own structure, its own demands, its own language, its own ending. — Don DeLillo

It's when you feel worse, that's when your character comes out and the last thing you want to do is quit. — Paul T. Scheuring

My father was a frustrated writer. I think he wanted to write the great American novel. — Anne Waldman

Two characters and sexy banter do not a book make, damn it. — Sherry Thomas

Reshuffllng of thoughts - facilitates a refreshed perspective to a mental deadlock! — Deeba Salim Irfan

Everyone my age had written a novel and I was still having difficulty writing a paragraph. — Ernest Hemingway,

The novel is a territory where one does not make assertions; it is a territory of play and of hypotheses. — Milan Kundera

Bear in mind that the novel
no matter how intimate, psychological, or subjective
is always an historical projection of its own time. — Samuel R. Delany

The most exciting part of writing a novel is when the characters take control of the story — Brandt Legg

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

A novel must give a sense of permanence as well as a sense of life. — E. M. Forster

Every great novel begins with a single word. One word, followed by another and another and another. Sentences forming paths to that dream. — Pamela Morris

I knew that it was impossible for us to be kept apart for too long. — Erica Sehyun Song

Some things are just like riding a bicycle; you jump on, pedal, and hope you don't fall. — Henry Mosquera

The central problem of novel-writing is causality. — Jorge Luis Borges

It's a great euphoria when you reach that writing zone. — Paul T. Scheuring

The impulse to write a novel comes from a momentary unified vision of life. — Angus Wilson

I think it took me half a page of 'Wolf Hall' to think: 'This is the novel I should have been writing all along.' — Hilary Mantel

Oh, readers. If only you knew what we've gone through for you. — Harry Olsen

The only difficulty is to know what bits to choose and what to leave out. Novel-writing is not creation, it is selection. — Winifred Holtby

I'm trying to get every man involved in art, into experimental music, or painting, or novel-writing. — Harvey Pekar

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature. — Ernest Hemingway,

There's a story you write, there's a story you shoot and there's a story you cut. — Paul T. Scheuring

Nothing beats novel writing because it's complete expression of you. You just control everything. Not even a movie director has that level of control. — Tom Perrotta

To this day, 'The Duke and I' remains particularly close to my heart; I felt it was the novel in which my writing took a huge leap forward. — Julia Quinn

The best way to keep your house spotless is to begin writing a novel. — Jen Knox

Misunderstandings arise only in undefined relationships — Anuradha Bhattacharyya

The desire to write a novel is the single required prerequisite for writing a novel. — Jane Smiley

Writing a story is kind of like surfing, as opposed to the novel, where you use a GPS to get somewhere. With surfing, you kind of jump. — Etgar Keret

Characters make their own plot. The dimensions of the characters determine the action of the novel. — Harper Lee

Novel-writing is the only place where someone who would have liked to do anything can still do that vicariously. — Richard Powers

The three rules to writing a novel;

1) Write
2) Write more
3) Keep writing — Sci Furz

I think the trick of writing a good picture book manuscript is to leave that space for illustration. An illustrated novel can do the same thing. — Mac Barnett

The only justification for writing a novel is that it should be wonderful. Adequate is inadequate. — Janet Burroway

Most times, my mind is just an ongoing, present-tense, first-person monologue. It's like I'm writing a novel, constantly, but only in my brain. — Andrew Shaffer

My writing often contains souvenirs of the day - a song I heard, a bird I saw - which I then put into the novel. — Amy Tan

Ironically, writing a novel is not a way to sort out your confusion. — Curtis Sittenfeld

I never write the storyline ahead of the novel and stick to it like glue. I prefer my writing to be organic. It takes on a life of it's own. — Airam

I write whenever it suits me. During a creative period I write every day; a novel should not be interrupted. — Francois Mauriac

I met a man at a party. He said "I'm writing a novel" I said "Oh really? Neither am I. — Peter Cook

To be motivated to write a novel, I need to be unable not to write. — Johnny Rich

While writing a novel, I don't read anything new in fiction. I am too engrossed. — Jane Gardam

I've never taken any classes or had formal training in writing novels. At its most basic, I learned how to structure a novel. — Dennis Green

I wish I could spend six years writing one novel. — Paullina Simons

Then I decided I would spend the summer writing a novel.
That would fix a lot of people. — Sylvia Plath

If I had simply wanted to trade on an insult to Islam, I could have done it in a sentence rather than writing a 250,000-word novel, a work of fiction. — Salman Rushdie

People recover differently. Some change cities, some fall in love and some begin writing. — Kanza Javed

My first novel is loaded with food references largely because my cupboards were bare, and I was writing hungry. — Jan Karon

When you write a novel, you make other people see your imaginary friends. — Tayari Jones

When you write a novel you have to live with the characters for a long time. So I prefer short stories. I never wrote anything more than 250 pages. — Ruskin Bond

The business of writing a novel is a long, meandering road into the self, into the imagination. And it's a road the writer travels alone. — Lisa Unger

We all have a book in us. The first step is recognising this. Writing it is a whole new journey. — Kathryn Joyce

When I was 22 years old, I thought girls would like me if I wrote a novel. I spent so much time writing that I was thrown out of graduate school. — James Altucher

People believe in everything except the reality. — Min Kim

Novel writing is like heroin addiction; it takes everything you've got. — James N. Frey

The difference between fanfic and a "real" novel is that fanfic is honest about its inspiration. — Mary Robinette Kowal

What we know about writing the novel is the novel. — Eudora Welty

Writing a novel is like going a great distance to take a small shit. — Harlan Ellison

While writing a novel I almost completely stop reading books in the same sub-genre for the duration. — Charles Stross

When you're writing a novel, you're still telling a story. But you're telling it very differently. It's a craft like anything else. — Howard Gordon

I spent four of my five years at Stanford writing a novel I was unable to sell. — Scott Turow

You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It's all there and you just have to find it. — Thomas Harris

Actually, I enjoy the process of writing a big long novel. — Donna Tartt

I am writing my second novel for children for Simon and Schuster. — Marlee Matlin

To write a novel in the heart of London is next to an impossibility. I feel as if I were nailing a flag to the top of a mast in a raging gale. — Virginia Woolf

After all this time I found that the novel is in fact punk rock. — Craig Ferguson

It doesn't take five novels to become a great writer ... it takes one novel rewritten five different times. — B. Chancellor Burgweger

When one is writing a novel in the first person, one must be that person. — Daphne Du Maurier

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. — G.K. Chesterton

Writing a novel is an intense and lonely business, but you have the reward at the end of a very direct dialogue between you and the reader. — Neil Cross

The sound of words in a novel is a pretty amazing thing, and I am concerned with the sound of every word I write. — Jamaica Kincaid

When I start writing a novel, I have no sense of direction, no idea, really nothing. — William Gibson

I'll write to you. A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel — Haruki Murakami

Drawing and painting is like a quickie in bed. Were as novel writing is a long term relationship, much more fulling. — Tara Dobbs

You never finish writing a novel, you eventually abandon it. — Tom Winton

The bourgeois novel is the greatest enemy of truth and honesty that was ever invented. — J.G. Ballard

A novel is a writer's rant disguised as entertainment ... — James Minter

It is so much hard work writing your first novel. You're not even sure that it is possible to do. — Asa Larsson

Novel writing is World Building & Word Weaving (Neil Postman's terms). — J.M. Varner

When I was 23 and about to go to law school, I thought I'd spend the summer writing a novel. — John Casey

If you caricature friends in your first novel they will be upset, but if you don't they will feel betrayed. — Mordecai Richler

Many modern novels have a beginning, a muddle and an end. — Philip Larkin

Why certainly, words possess power. They do! But releasing their magic requires combining and arranging those words in the right order. — Richelle E. Goodrich

I read all the time. Sometimes I get asked if I've thought about writing a novel. — Noah Baumbach

Don't be offended if you encounter some good-natured ribbing; the idea of
writing a novel in a month deserves to be laughed at. — Chris Baty

The disgusting face of things alone was not enough for writing a novel: without imagination it would seem not a true face but a mask. — Elena Ferrante

For me, the main inspiration to write a story or novel is the voice of its central character, or the narrative voice of the story itself. — Scott Bradfield

Writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity. — Mohsin Hamid

Writing a novel without being asked seems a bit like having a baby when you have nowhere to live. — Lucy Ellmann