A Quote by Philip Roth

If you read a novel in more than two weeks, you don't read the novel really.

Philip Roth

Quote Topics

More Novel Read Really Than Two Two Weeks Weeks

Quote Author

Philip Roth
American - Novelist
March 19, 1933 - May 22, 2018

To read a novel requires a certain amount of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks, you don't read the novel, really.

Philip Roth

To read a novel requires a certain kind of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks, you don't read the novel really.

Philip Roth

The point is, that the function of the novel seems to be changing; it has become an outpost of journalism; we read novels for information about areas of life we don't know - Nigeria, South Africa, the American army, a coal-mining village, coteries in Chelsea, etc. We read to find out what is going on. One novel in five hundred or a thousand has the quality a novel should have to make it a novel - the quality of philosophy.

Doris Lessing

Why would somebody just read a novel when they can see it on TV or in the cinema? I really have to think of the things fiction can do that film can't and play to the strengths of the novel. With a novel, you can get right inside somebody's head.

Kazuo Ishiguro

I don't know that I read more than the average person. I don't think I do very much. I tend to read more when I'm on holiday. That's when I can go through books like you wouldn't believe. I read a bit of everything, but the novel has always been very important to me.

Mark Knopfler

Wonderful thing about novels is that sometimes we read a novel and we know the person in the novel more than we know people in our own lives.

Edwidge Danticat

In 1965, when I was fourteen, I read my first adult novel; it was a historical novel about Katherine of Aragon, and I could not put it down. When I finished it, I had to find out the true facts behind the story and if people really carried on like that in those days. So I began to read proper history books, and found that they did!

Alison Weir

I read everything. I'll read a John Grisham novel, I'll sit and read a whole book of poems by Maya Angelou, or I'll just read some Mary Oliver - this is a book that was given to me for Christmas. No particular genre. And I read in French, and I read in German, and I read in English. I love to see how other people use language.

Jessye Norman

In my college years, I would retreat to our summer house for two weeks in June to read a novel a day. How exciting it was, after pouring my coffee and making myself comfortable on the porch, to open the next book on the roster, read the first sentences, and find myself on the platform of a train station.

Amor Towles

I read a script or I read a project or I read a novel and I know that I'm going to spend two to three years of my life with that, exclusively. So you better like it. There better be an honorable, real need to make that movie.

Robert Schwentke

I'm always trying to make something that is impossible to film. Why would somebody just read a novel when they can see it on TV or in the cinema? I really have to think of the things fiction can do that film can't and play to the strengths of the novel. With a novel, you can get right inside somebody's head.

Kazuo Ishiguro

I have rarely read a more wonderful book than To Win Her Favor by Tamera Alexander. Rich with historical detail and fully developed characters, this novel held me spellbound until the last page. If you read one historical novel this year, make it To Win Her Favor. It will linger with you long after the last page.

Colleen Coble

I've read every single fantasy novel there is. I mean, I would challenge a lot of people to read more fantasy novels than I have.

Felicia Day

A novelist writes a novel, and people read it. But reading is a solitary act. While it may elicit a varied and personal response, the communal nature of the audience is like having five hundred people read your novel and respond to it at the same time. I find that thrilling.

August Wilson

People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are.