A Quote by Salman Rushdie

Sometimes writing a novel is not unlike having a baby. You'd have to ask a female novelist to compare the pain.

Salman Rushdie

Quote Topics

Ask Baby Compare Female Having Having A Baby Novel Novelist Pain Sometimes Unlike Writing

Quote Author

Salman Rushdie
Indian - Novelist
Born: June 19, 1947

A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished. Marathoners have to carefully pace themselves so that they don't run out of energy (or in the case of the novelist-- ideas) because they have so far to run. To mix the metaphor, writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage.

Jonathan Carroll

Writing a novel is not at all like riding a bike. Writing a novel is like having to redesign a bike, based on laws of physics that you don't understand, in a new universe. So having written one novel does nothing for you when you have to write the second one.

Daniel Alarcon

I am a novelist. I traffic in subtleties, and my goal in writing a novel is to leave the reader not knowing what to think. A good novel shouldn't have a point.

Teju Cole

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

Lucy Ellmann

Today the crime novelist has one advantage denied to writers of 'straight' or 'literary' novels. Unlike them he can range over all levels of society, for crime can easily breach the barriers that exist in our stratified society. Because of these barriers the modern literary novel, unlike its 19th-century predecessors, is often confined to the horizontal, dealing only with one class. But crime runs through society from top to bottom, and so the crime novelist can present a fuller picture of the way we live now.

Allan Massie

Writing a novel is like making love, but it's also like having a tooth pulled. Pleasure and pain. Sometimes it's like making love while having a tooth pulled.

Dean Koontz

In terms of style, I think the memoirist should have a novelist's skill and all the elements of a novelist's toolbox. When I read a memoir, I want to really, deeply experience what the author experienced. I want to see the characters and hear the way they speak and understand how they think. And so in that way, writing a memoir feels similar to writing a novel.

Danielle Trussoni

Someone told me that having a baby is like having your heart walking around outside of your body, and I didn't understand it until I had a baby. Now, like, everything he does literally crushes my heart. In a great way. And then if he's in pain, it's like my whole endeavor is to make sure he's not in pain.

Elizabeth Banks

Novel-writing is, for the novelist, a game of let's pretend.

Philip Roth

The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything. The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead.

Milan Kundera

The biggest downside to being a novelist is writing the novel.

Jill Barnett

And the nice thing about writing a novel is you take your time, you sit with the character sometimes nine years, you look very deeply at a situation, unlike in real life when we just kind of snap something out.

Sandra Cisneros

Being a new mother was a joyful and sometimes overwhelming experience - and as the first Missouri female state legislator to have a baby while in office, having heath care for myself and my son gave me some needed peace of mind.