Novel Quality Quotes

The reason Saul Bellow doesn't talk to me anymore is because he knows his new novels are not worth reading.

Novels so often provide an anodyne and not an antidote, glide one into torpid slumbers instead of rousing one with a burning brand.

The novel is a highly corrupt medium, after all - in the end the vast majority of them simply aren't that great, and are destined to be forgotten.

I've never read anything so badly written that got published. It made 'Twilight' look like 'War and Peace.'

It is clear that a novel cannot be too bad to be worth publishing. . . . It certainly is possible for a novel to be too good to be worth publishing.

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

A fiction which is designed to inculcate an object wholly alien to the imagination sins against the first law of art; and if a writer of fiction narrow his scope to particulars so positive as polemical controversy in matters ecclesiastical, political or moral, his work may or may not be an able treatise, but it must be a very poor novel.

I can't think of any one film that improved on a good novel, but I can think of many good films that came from very bad novels.

'War and Peace' goes down a lot smoother than a Dan Brown novel, let me tell you.

Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron,” Sebastian said approvingly. “Excellent choice.” “You have read this?” Alexei asked. “It’s not as good as Miss Davenport and the Dark Marquis, of course, but worlds better than Miss Sainsbury and the Mysterious Colonel.” Harry found himself rendered speechless. “I’m reading Miss Truesdale and the Silent Gentleman right now.” “Silent?” Harry echoed. “There is a noticeable lack of dialogue,” Sebastian confirmed.

The novel may stimulate you to think. It may satisfy your aesthetic sense. It may arouse your moral emotions. But if it does not entertain you it is a bad novel.

A good novel editor is invisible.

I find that nonfiction writers are the likeliest to turn out interesting novels.

A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.

A surprising number [of novels] have been read aloud to me, and I like all if moderately good, and if they do not end unhappily-against which a law ought to be passed.

The 21st chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change. ----- "A Clockwork Orange Resucked" intro to first full American version 1986

Size matters in fiction, but so does lack of size. Everything else being equal, fat novels tend to be perceived as serious, very thin ones as more honest, more real. Writers address these age-old expectations by filling their big books with philosophy and cramming their little ones with feeling.

I prefer a great novel, but many novels come with a bunch of novel-y writerliness that feels sort of macho to me, so I do end up reading lots of shorter things.

I have never read a really good novel written by a man where women are portrayed as they truly are. They can be portrayed externally very well - Stendhal's Madame de Renal, for example - but only as seen from the outside.

The best novels are those that are important without being like medicine; they have something to say, are expansive and intelligent but never forget to be entertaining and to have character and emotion at their centre.

I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author's political views.

The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote.

What surprised me about 'The Casual Vacancy' was not just how good it was, but the particular way in which it was good.

If a novel reveals true and vivid relationships, it is a moral work, no matter what the relationships consist in. If the novelisthonours the relationship in itself, it will be a great novel.

In the end, for me, the sole single goal is to write the best novel that I can. Whether or not it gets made or gets purchased.