I wonder if novels work for women because they give us a safe place to talk about our ish.
I spend about a year between novels
From the beginning. I was a poem-writing child. I wrote little novels in my composition book when I was eight, nine years old.
I am a professor who writes novels on Sundays
The dead hand of research lies heavy on too many novels.
I prefer all but the very worst travel books, to all but the very best novels.
Novels often have leisurely openings; a TV drama needs an arresting opening.
Novels tend to end as the Paternoster begins: with the kingdom of God on earth.
Why should a novelist not also be a historian? To force unnatural divisions within the English language is to work against its capacious and accommodating nature. To expect a writer to produce only novels, or only histories, is equivalent to demanding from a composer that he or she write only string quartets or piano sonatas.
I think books in which people are really happy and things are going well are probably the most challenging novels there are to write, and there are very few of them.
I'm going to marry my novels and have little short stories for children.
Novels as dull as dishwater, with the grease of random sentiments floating on top.
I have written two medical novels. I have never studied medicine, never seen an operation
Well, when you look at a lot of science fiction novels they're asking questions about power. There are questions about what it means to have power and what are the long-term consequences of power.
I write novels about ordinary women who face seemingly insurmountable odds but through courage and determination find their heart's desire.
I've told youngsters not to write their autobiographical novel at the age of twenty-one; to save it for the time when they're fifty-one or sixty-one. They should write other novels first, to learn their craft; they shouldn't cut their teeth on the valuable material of childhood because they'll never have better material, ever, to work with.
Only in novels can we take another human being into our head and create something jointly.
All novels are sequels; influence is bliss.
I never thought I would write the way that I write for the studios now, which is like, not little novels, but be someone who literally is more like, you know, sometimes I guess we describe, we're more Salieri than Mozart.
I wonder if we are all wrong about each other, if we are just composing unwritten novels about the people we meet?