Jane Smiley Quotes

Writing a novel is a lot like reading one.

Ironically, writing a novel is not a way to sort out your confusion.

Then I decided I would spend the summer writing a novel. That would fix a lot of people.

Writing is my number one passion. I've written two novels. I've written a screenplay. I also write short stories and poetry.

You may be able to write a novel, you may not. You will never know until you have worked very hard indeed and written at least part of it. You will never really know until you have written the whole of it and submitted it for publication.

You never learn how to write a novel. You just learn how to write the novel that you're writing.

Wrote my first "novel" when I was six. Studied a bit in college, but then pursued history... But when I started writing professionally, it was mostly learn as you go.

When you write a novel, you make other people see your imaginary friends.

The search for the word gets no easier but nobody else is going to write your novel for you.

Writing novels takes up about 100% of my available working time.

Never, if you can possibly help it, write a novel. It is, in the first place, a thoroughly unsocial act. It makes one obnoxious to one's family and to one's friends. One sits about for many weeks, months, even years, in the worst cases, in a state of stupefaction.

I keep telling myself I should try very hard to write a novel of about 210 pages... I don't seem to be capable of it, but I keep hoping it will happen.

I like writing my own stuff. If a book came along I would maybe do that.

When I want to read a novel, I write one.

The best way to write a novel is to do it behind your own back.

I guess I've always been an aspiring novelist. I went to Princeton and wrote a novel for my thesis.

You can't write ... on the strength of influence. You can only write a good story or a good novel by yourself.

I've never been able to write a book without one very strong character in my rucksack.

Books are great for if you want to work on the craft of writing for yourself, or, you know, to write novels or indie films, stuff like that.

I always wanted to write. While I was on a long surf trip, supporting myself with various day jobs, I was working hard on a novel. My third novel, in fact.

I'm a novelist at heart. How's that? And that's how I make my living, is I write novels.

If you're writing a book where you want to make a positive truth claim, then you should absolutely call it nonfiction or memoir. If you don't want to make that claim - if that's not what's important to you; if you're more interested in storytelling and interiority and interpersonal relationships than in objective, checkable facts about the world - then why wouldn't you call it a novel, and take advantage of what that gets you, of the extra freedom, of belonging to the tradition of the novel?

The novel is very much alive, indeed. In Toronto at the Sixth Annual International Festival of Authors (October 1985) I listened to novelists by the dozen.

When I write a story, I just wanna tell you what's in my head. It can come from real life and then turn into fantasy, stuff just rhyming. And write about what you know. I just like to tell stories that have not been told or [told] from my perspective.

If you don't see the book you want on the shelves, write it.