Ellen Glasgow Quotes

A lot of times you get people writing wonderful sentences and paragraphs, and they fall in love with their prose style, but the stories really aren't that terrific.

The thing I am attracted to is just good writing and stories that are based somewhat in reality.

Yes - 90% of fantasy is crap. And so is 90% of science fiction and 90% of mystery fiction and 90% of literary fiction.

A good novel is a good novel, pointe finale. And I think what I'm writing is exactly that.

You can't take a story and just stretch it out - that does not a novel make.

A good novel doesn't just transcend the boundaries of its target market - it knows nothing about target markets.

I think the short story is a very underrated art form. We know that novels deserve respect.

To me, a book is a book. A novel is a novel, and you have hundreds of possibilities, options, and they may all be fine. Charles Dickens or Ingeborg Bachmann, Claude Simon or later writers. The one and only condition is that it has to be good: it has to have quality, substance, atmosphere.

I do think novels are overlooked. I did write one some years ago that I think is quite good, called 'The End of the Story,' not to blow my own horn.

As an editor, I read Charlotte Rogan's amazing debut novel, 'The Lifeboat,' when it was still in manuscript. I read it in one night, and I really wanted my company to publish it, but we lost it to another house. It's such a wonderful combination of beautiful writing and suspenseful storytelling.

If you set out to write an adjective novel, you're setting out to write a mediocre novel; your allegiance is to the adjective, not to the story, and then that just sucks all the joy right out of it.

There is no better way of elevating the novel than by making it into a construct which contains ideas.

I'll take any story if it's good.

Read. Read. Read. Read many genres. Read good writing. Read bad writing and figure out the difference. Learn the craft of writing.

Size has nothing to do with literature. All legs are long enough to touch the ground, and all books are big enough to fill their covers.

All good Literature rests primarily on insight.

I don't read much nonfiction because the nonfiction I do read always seems to be so badly written. What I enjoy about fiction - the great gift of fiction - is that it gives language an opportunity to happen.

Real novelists, those we admire, those we consider timeless in their language and character and scene, those who receive accolades for inventive language and form, have writing lives we imagine in specific ways.

A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.

I read many wonderful novels, though I now find the idea of literary fiction obsolete.

I read a lot of scripts, and there's a lot of good writing and a lot of OK writing and a lot of crappy writing. And even with the really good writing, it doesn't necessarily speak to me.

One of the nice things about 'The New Yorker' is they let you write stories that sometimes end up almost half a book.

My agent will say, 'Well, it's another graphic novel.' I don't care. It's better writing than anything else that's out there. The characters are much better.

There are always interesting, innovative, dynamic stories being written and being published. They're not always being prominently published, but they're being published.

Robert Bolt's storytelling is the kind that I grew up with and aspired to.