I have survived by representing these sufferings of mine in the form of the novel.
Kenzaburo Oe

In a novel, it's hard to keep track of everybody.
Irwin Shaw

I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel. What's an unpopular novel?
Irwin Shaw

I spend eight months outlining and researching the novel before I begin to write a single word of the prose.
Jeffery Deaver

But compared to writing a novel, where you can be God, I did the Bay of Pigs invasion in six pages once, and there were 50,000 guys with boots that I didn't have to pay, and all those extras; we didn't have to pay them.
John Sayles

I was totally absorbed in the real world, the politics, the history, the news, and I just couldn't find my way into the fictional world... When I finally could return to writing the novel, it was in fits and starts.
David Guterson

When I look back over my novels what I find is that when I think I'm finished with a theme, I'm generally not. And usually themes will recur from novel to novel in odd, new guises.
Richard Russo

My family can always tell when I'm well into a novel because the meals get very crummy.
Anne Tyler

If one book's done this well, you want to write another one that does just as well. There's that horror of the second novel that doesn't match up.
Mark Haddon

I probably listen to Burn more than any of them, because it was so new me, so novel. To see my name on an actual record was such an incredible feeling.
David Coverdale

I did not know at first that it would be a series; I discovered after the first novel that I had more to say about it, so I did another. And another, and then the readers demanded yet more.
Piers Anthony

A book is sent out into the world, and there is no way of fully anticipating the responses it will elicit. Consider the responses called forth by the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare - let alone contemporary poetry or a modern novel.
Chaim Potok

You can be interested in a Jane Smiley novel whether or not anyone says a word. She enters into her characters' thoughts with great understanding and depth.
Richard Russo

SOON was the first novel where I used a rough outline. Usually I have characters and an idea and write as a process of discovery. Like working without a net.
Jerry B. Jenkins

The suspense of a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist, who is intensely curious about what will happen to the hero.
Mary McCarthy

The hardest novel to write was Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.
Anne Tyler

The pleasure of writing fiction is that you are always spotting some new approach, an alternative way of telling a story and manipulating characters; the novel is such a wonderfully flexible form.
Penelope Lively

Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.
Russell Lynes

I've had some tremendous adventures, good and bad. It's part of the novel, and a novel isn't interesting if it doesn't have some good and bad. And you don't know what good is if bad hasn't been a part of your life.
Lynn Johnston

I'm writing a novel about two actresses who go to New York, because that's what I know about. One has lost touch with reality, disappears and is picked up by a man.
Julie Walters