Cathleen Schine Quotes

I feel like my brain is more geared towards a novel than it is to a movie.

I write books that will make 10 or 12 hours disappear, and hopefully they'll resonate with you for a few days, where you'll remember the characters and the story. That suits me fine; I am happy with that.

Novels are such mysterious and amorphous and tender things.

Novels aren't pedagogical instruments, or instructions in law or physics or any other discipline. A novel has to be an emotional experience, a trip of the imagination, and because science has raised so many issues that concern and affect humans, it's a good starting place for me.

I think a writer's first job is to entertain, even in novels: to tell a compelling story that pulls the reader along toward an end. At the same time, the best stories are character-driven.

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

A good novel is worth more then the best scientific study.

A novel should tell a story, be a pleasure to read, and at the same time it should be thought-provoking, even a bit instructive.

Writing is so fun precisely because if you take out the right adjective, the readers can decide what kind of book is in their hands. Suspension of disbelief should not be mandatory in contemporary writing.

I love telling stories. Creating a character, a world, a whole universe out of nothing. That part I can't get enough of.

My first attraction to writing novels was the plot, that almost extinct animal. Those novels I read which made me want to be a novelist were long, always plotted, novels - not just Victorian novels, but also those of my New England ancestors: Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

I enjoy receiving and giving realistic fiction, for both children and adults, with strong characters, beautiful language, and humane visions.

No, the thing is, we all love storytelling, and as a writer you get to tell stories all the time.

I like to think of myself as a storyteller.

I've written fiction for as long as I can remember; it's always been my preferred form of play.

I'm always saying that my books are not autobiographical because they're not. I can't choose any one scene and say, 'Oh, this is exactly what happened to me!' I just use little snippets of things as a starting point!

Sometimes my lyrics may describe a situation that happened to a friend. Other times, I create a story from the ground up.

In journalism I can only tell what happened. In fiction, I can show it.

I love stories. I just enjoy telling stories and watching what these characters do - although writing continues to be just as hard as it always was.

I love telling stories. I love the intimacy between the writer and reader. When you write sketches it's over in two minutes. When you write a book the characters have to have a bit of emotional depth.

It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader.

Writing is writing to me. I'm incapable of saying no to any writing job, so I've done everything - historical fiction, myths, fairy tales, anything that anybody expresses any interest in me writing, I'll write. It's the same reason I used to read as a child: I like going somewhere else and being someone else.

My novels are all ideas.

I like to think that I am telling a story rather than writing it.

I always like to tell a story.