A Quote by D. H. Lawrence

In every great novel, who is the hero all the time? Not any of the characters, but some unnamed and nameless flame behind them all.

D. H. Lawrence

Quote Topics

Any Behind Characters Every Flame Great Hero Nameless Novel Some Them Time

Quote Author

D. H. Lawrence
English - Writer
September 11, 1885 - March 2, 1930

But to be perfectly frank, this childish idea that the author of a novel has some special insight into the characters in the novel ... it's ridiculous. That novel was composed of scratches on a page, dear. The characters inhabiting it have no life outside of those scratches. What happened to them? They all ceased to exist the moment the novel ended.

John Green

However appalling to consider, however tedious to enact, every novel requires furniture, whether it is to be named or unnamed, for the characters will be unable to remain in standing position for the duration of the story.

Jonathan Lethem

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

I live intimately with my characters before starting a book. I cut out pictures of them for my wall. I do time lines for each major character and a time line for the entire novel: What is going on in the world as my characters struggle with their problems?

Walter Dean Myers

When I'm writing a novel, one of the things I do is get big poster boards. They're actually canvases that artists use. And I keep all the characters' names on them. If you write a big novel, there's a lot of characters.

Alexi Zentner

There were nameless horrors abroad; and no matter how little one might be able to get at them, one ought tp stand prepared for any sort of action at any time.

H. P. Lovecraft

Mystical experiences nearly always lead one to a belief that some aspect of consciousness is imperishable. In a Buddhist metaphor the consciousness of the individual is like a flame that burns through the night. It is not the same flame over time, yet neither is it another flame.

Marilyn Ferguson

I've always been a fan of the 19th century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major minor character, the passage of time and its effect on the characters in the story.

John Irving

Honestly, when you think of any great action hero or any great hero out there or great character actor, you kind of transcend the character. You just don't love the character, you love the guy. In any of the great action stars, you see the guy doing the work.

Chad Stahelski

I think that I write much more naturally about characters in solitude than characters interacting with others. My natural inclination - and one that I've learned to push against - is to give primacy to a character's interior world. Over the three books that I've written, I've had to teach myself that not every feeling needs to be described and that often the most impactful writing more elegantly evokes those unnamed feelings through the way characters speak and behave.

Stefan Merrill Block

Behind every door in London there are stories, behind every one ghosts. The greatest writers in the history of the written word have given them substance, given them life. And so we readers walk, and dream, and imagine, in the city where imagination found its great home.

Anna Quindlen

In some ways, writing a novel, especially a novel set in the past and about characters who once lived, is about amassing enough details and arranging them properly in order to offer the reader a verisimilitude that satisfies his or her curiosity about the story at hand.

David Ebershoff

I have a lot of blurring between fiction and non-fiction in so many of my works. For example, my first novel, 'When Nietzsche Wept,' has a great deal of non-fiction in it. I didn't create many characters at all. Almost all of them are historical characters that actually existed.

Irvin D. Yalom

My writing's like a journey. I'll know some of the stops ahead of time, and I'll make some of those stops and some of them I won't. Some will be a moot point by the time I get there. You know every script will have four to six basic scenes that you're going to do. It's all the scenes where your characters really come from.

Quentin Tarantino

There is one Cosmic Essence, all-pervading, all-knowing, all-powerful. This nameless formless essence can be approached by any name, any form, any symbol that suites the taste of the individual. Follow your religion, but try to understand the real purpose behind all of the rituals and traditions, and experience that Oneness.