The hardest thing in a novel is time. You've got [a line like] "two weeks later, he woke … - T.C. Boyle

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Quote of the day

That to begin with; let respect be the foundation, affection the first floor, love the superstructure.

T.C. Boyle

The hardest thing in a novel is time. You've got [a line like] "two weeks later, he woke up with a headache," and you've got to add up that entire two weeks and what the date is and whether it works. That kind of stuff drives me crazy and if I don't have it exactly right, I can't move forward because I don't feel confident.

Confident, Crazy, Forward, Moving, Time, Two

Same Author Quotes

First you have nothing, and then, astonishingly, after ripping out your brain and your heart and betraying your friends and ex-lovers and dreaming like a zombie over the page till you can't see or hear or smell or taste, you have something.

Betraying, Dream, Friends, Heart, Smell, Taste

Pleasure, I remind myself, is inseparable from its lawfully wedded mate, pain.

Lawfully, Mates, Pain, Pleasure, Remind

There are always surprises. Life may be inveterately grim and the surprises disproportionately unpleasant, but it would be hardly worth living if there were no exceptions, no sunny days, no acts of random kindness.

Disproportionately, Inveterately, Kindness, May, Worth, Would Be

We live in a cluttered culture, a culture of information in which even our computers can't tell us what's worth knowing and what is merely cultural scrap. In such a society, we don't have the experience of contemplative space, of the time or mood to engage a book of poetry or even read a novel. Who can achieve the unconscious-conscious state of the reader when everything is stimulation, everything is movement and information?

Book, Knowing, Space, Mood, Tell

I have an idea and a first line -- and that suggests the rest of it. I have little concept of what I’m going to say, or where it’s going. I have some idea of how long it’s going to be -- but not what will happen or what the themes will be. That’s the intrigue of doing it -- it’s a process of discovery. You get to discover what you’re going to say and what it’s going to mean.

Discovery, Ideas, Mean, Say, Suggests