I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.
I'm very bad at violence in real life. I can't stand it. And I'm so fed up with crime novels that have too much violence. I can't really do it. It's unnecessary.
I try to write about things, places, events, and phenomena I know about personally. That helps make the novels more genuine.
The whole idea of interviews is in itself absurd - one cannot answer deep questions about what one's life was like - one writes novels about it.
Poems are taught as though the poet has put a secret key in his words and it is the reader's job to find it. Poems are not mystery novels.
I'm hoping to develop a lot of graphic novels and television shows and films and animation. I've got my hands in a lot of different things!
Barchester Towers has become one of those novels which do not die quite at once, which live and are read for perhaps a quarter of a century.
I get scripts and think, 'There's not enough here to get my teeth stuck into.' That's a result of studying English, where you luxuriate in these big, lush novels.
I don't do research for my novels. Obviously, in my other line of work as a reporter and a columnist, I've had the opportunity to get to know both social workers and TV talk-show hosts.
A book is basically just symbols arranged to form this story, this world. But on the other hand, books, novels, literature in general, is what shows us at our most human.
A Good Soldier is one of my favorite novels, for various reasons. But the class question is a good one, because it's not always easy to empathize with privileged people.
People who actually tell stories, meaning people who write novels and make feature films, don't see themselves as storytellers.
After I had written more than a dozen adult genre novels, an editor I knew in New York asked me to write a mystery for young adults.
I've written a lot of novels for teens and tweens ... but I'd never really tackled the North Carolina side of me. And it's so strong and so important, and yet I hadn't acknowledged it. And so one of the things I wanted to do in "Shine" is take that on.
Most crime novels offer a curious kind of escape, to places that jag the nerves and worry the mind. Their rides of suspense give a good thrill, but it's rarely a comfortable one.
I usually have more than one thing I'm working on at once - I've been working on three different novels. When I get stuck on one, I hop back and forth.
All my life I have been reading romance novels. Those stupid books ruined me. I've always wanted that fire that every book I ever read talks about.
I abhor crime novels in which the main character can behave however he or she pleases, or do things that normal people do not do, without those actions having social consequences.
My hope is that my novels reflect the reality of a world where good and evil exist, imperfect people make mistakes, but a perfect Heavenly Father offers forgiveness and second chances.
I never think there's any competition between films. I root for everybody's films. I especially have a fond place in my heart for graphic novels and comics.
It seems to me that good novels celebrate the mystery in ordinary life, and summing it all up in psychological terms strips the mystery away.
People unacquainted with graphic novels, including journalists, tend to think of 'Watchmen' as a book by Alan Moore that happens to have some illustrations. And that does a disservice to the entire form.
Debut novels are difficult because nobody knows you... they just don't find a huge audience, because that's how the market works.
I like the idea of making big budget films with a heart. I like graphic novels more than comic books.
If you study your own struggles, the struggles of others, even in movies or novels you'll see the root of all their suffering is always attachments
I must love big novels, because that's what I've written. It takes a while before you begin to breathe the air the characters breathe.
My literature is much more the result of a paradox than that of an implacable logic, typical of police novels. The paradox is the tension that exists in my soul.
All novels . . . are concerned with the enigma of the self. As soon as you create an imaginary being, a character, you are automatically confronted by the question: what is the self? How can it be grasped?
Because, if one is writing novels today, concentrating on the beauty of the prose is right up there with concentrating on your semi-colons, for wasted effort.
Gordon eyed them with inert hatred. At this moment he hated all books, and novels most of all. Horrible to think of all that soggy, half-baked trash massed together in one place.
I know that many writers have had to write under censorship and yet produced good novels; for instance, Cervantes wrote Don Quixote under Catholic censorship.
I hope people will like my novels after I'm dead. And I hope my children think about me in good ways, by and large.
My first two novels featured narrators who were aggressively unattached: They couldn't form any sort of genuine relationship. So I had thoroughly explored the geography of loneliness and isolation.
I closed my own jazz bar so I could be a man who can write novels as I like. I was pleased about that. This pleasure was connected to the pleasure of writing.
Without explaining why, and, most of all, without naming other authors or books, I can only say my novels are influenced by love and death.
For research, I like to go to the location of the places in the novels. The first thing that I do is involve my senses: I notice the smells; I open the trash cans and look at what people have thrown away.
I think of novels in architectural terms. You have to enter at the gate, and this gate must be constructed in such a way that the reader has immediate confidence in the strength of the building.
This is one of his most human and most amusing and witty novels. The characters are very Indian. I decided that I wanted to do a comedy, so this was just the right one.
Novels are nothing but evolution, but there does come a point when that stops, and the story is sealed within the pages of the book. That doesn't happen with a play. Even performances are different every night.
People unacquainted with graphic novels, including journalists, tend to think of Watchmen as a book by Alan Moore that happens to have some illustrations. And that does a disservice to the entire form.
My experience with My Sister Rosa showed me, once again, that I have a much easier time of it if I sell my novels after I finish them, not before. I'm lucky that I'm in a position where I'm able to do that.
Overpopulated fiction can be so confusing that readers put the story down. Under-populated novels can seem claustrophobic or boring. You want the right number of characters for your particular work.
A surprising number of teens I meet in rougher schools around the country find refuge in novels and creative writing. It's not always the usual suspects either, the high achievers.
Im a geek - I read fantasy novels, I play World of Warcraft, Im a massive gamer, I have Star Trek outfits.
But are they all horrid, are you sure they are all horrid? [Referring to Gothic novels, fashionable in England at the beginning of the 19th century, but frowned upon in polite society.]
My first novel, 'You Must be Sisters,' was started in Pakistan. I've wrote several novels and a TV drama set or partly-set there.
When I was young, I would write all the time. Novels, plays, and poems. It's like a disease - my life is filled with fantasies, and I have to write them all down.
Nobody has ever written as many enjoyable, fun-to-read crime novels as Agatha Christie. It's all about the storytelling and the pleasure of the reader. She doesn't want to be deep or highbrow.
In my career as a writer, I preferred to avoid current events: I wrote young adult novels and book reviews and lifestyle journalism about health and parenting and other such evergreens.
I started out as a novelist, and I think novels have gotten a little stiff, a little repetitive, and the energy in comics was much more appealing.
In pre-movie days, the business of peddling lies about life was spotty and unorganized. It was carried on by the cheaper magazines, dime novels, the hinterland preachers and whooping politicians.
Above my cradle loomed the bookcase where/ Latin ashes and the dust of Greece/ mingled with novels, history, and verse/ in one dark Babel. I was folio-high/ when I first heard the voices.
If you ask people if they enjoy crime novels, they'll say, 'Oh, my guilty pleasure is...' then name a really brilliant crime writer.
It seems to me that good novels celebrate the mystery in ordinary life, and summing it all up in psychological terms strips the mystery away
With every sentence she writes, Davis freshens the senses. Her novels achieve a tone that’s unlike anyone else’s, creating an atmosphere you don’t so much interpret as breathe.
Critics are not creators. They rarely write great novels, invent new technologies, or come up with a great business idea.
On the whole, I think you should write biographies of those you admire and respect, and novels about human beings who you think are sadly mistaken.
Writers of novels and romance in general bring a double loss to their readers; robbing them of their time and money; representing men, manners, and things, that never have been, or are likely to be.
I love getting cookbooks - people will give them to me, and I read them like novels and file everything away.
Young adult novels don't shy away from the discussion of weight issues, and 'Blubber,' the tale of an overweight, not-so-sympathetic fifth-grader bullied by her peers, is a refreshing take.
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