Hanya Yanagihara Quotes

I studied philosophy, religious studies, and English. My training was writing four full-length novels and hiring an editor to tear them apart. I had enough money to do that, and then rewriting and rewriting and rewriting.

I don't think any novelist should be concerned with literature.

There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.

I tend to be more of a novel writer. In fact, some of my novels started out as short stories, and I just got carried away! I think some of my best writing is in the short story form, but novels come more naturally to me.

Novelists should be like scientists, dissecting the cadaver.

I come from a prose background. I come from short story background, and that led me into novels.

What I like to write about is stuff I know. I don't think I could write a novel. I don't think I have it in me to come up with those kinds of characters.

I would recommend the short story form, which is a lot harder to write since you have to be so careful with words, until there is plenty of time to doodle through a novel.

I don't like to talk about work in progress, but the novel I'm working on now is definitely not horror.

I'm writing another novel and I know what I'm going to do after, which may be something more like this again, maybe some strange mixture of fiction and non-fiction.

I suspect there are two kinds of novelists. Those who have a point of view and have something to say and then write a novel in order to say that thing, and those of us who write the book in order to find out what we think about that thing.

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

I love 'Memory Keeper's Daughter,' but in some ways I think 'The Lake of Dreams' is a stronger book. I was able to tell the story I wanted to tell. That's all you can ever do as a writer. From there on you have no control over it.

I have no favourite genre or style but treat each novel with the same care, imagination and craftsmanship. It's as difficult to write a crime or a children's novel with a touch of style and grace as it is a literary novel.

Since I grew up, I have never deliberately used any technique at all other than the physical shaping of my tale so that it more or less resembles what has been thought of as a novel for these last two hundred years.

I'm a novelist. I'm not a crusader, and I'm not an editorial writer. And I'm not writing fiction to convince anybody of anything.

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.

I write easily, let's put it that way. And in a novel particularly, the characters take over. And they tell me what to say and they tell me what they're doing. And I'm a third of the way into a novel and then I just let the characters finish it for me.

It's been a while since I've written a novel aimed at the adult market, but I never sit down and say to myself, 'Okay, now I'm going to write something for us old folks.' I get gripped by an idea, and I go where the idea takes me.

A novel, in the end, is a container, a shape which you are trying to pour your story into.

I am a fictionalizing philosopher, not a novelist.

I have some other novels I want to write. I have a lot of short stories - I love the short story.

I've tried to write deep and serious. I spent years working to write a story that would make my writing group cry.

Writing novels is where I'm most comfortable. It's a very intimate experience.

I'm not nearly smart enough or imaginative enough to tackle the novel form. Never happen.