#novels

I don't think you can write novels on the road. You need a certain stability. ↗

— Leonard Cohen

#i #need #novels #road #stability

When I do a novel, I don't really use the script, I use the book; when I did Apocalypse Now, I used Heart of Darkness. Novels usually have so much rich material. ↗

— Francis Ford Coppola

#book #darkness #did #heart #i

I revise constantly, as I go along and then again after I've finished a first draft. Few of my novels contain a single sentence that closely resembles the sentence I first set down. I just find that I have to keep zapping and zapping the English language until it starts to behave in some way that vaguely matches my intentions. ↗

— Michael Cunningham

#again #along #behave #closely #constantly

You have started the book with this bubble over your head that contains a cathedral full of fire - that contains a novel so vast and great and penetrating and bright and dark that it will put all other novels ever written to shame. And then, as you get towards the end, you begin to realise, no, it's just this book. ↗

— Michael Cunningham

#book #bright #bubble #cathedral #contains

To me, the newspaper business was a way to learn about life and how things worked in the real world and how people spoke. You learn all the skills - you learn to listen, you learn to take notes - everything you use later as a novelist was valuable training in the newspaper world. But I always wanted to write novels. ↗

— Carl Hiaasen

#always #business #everything #how #i

I do have some theatrical background. I've written plays and seen plays and read plays. But I also read novels. One thing I don't read is screenplays. ↗

— Charlie Kaufman

#background #i #i do #novels #one thing

When I first started to get into writing, it was via music. I'd generate ideas for songs that would turn into stories, then they'd turn into novels. I was biased toward music. ↗

— Irvine Welsh

#first #generate #get #i #ideas

You have to be kind of clued into them, they are a world of their own, and most people find them disappointing because the best short stories are not constructed like novels. ↗

— Tobias Wolff

#because #best #clued #constructed #disappointing

I don't think you can tell the objective truth about a person. That's why people write novels. ↗

— A. N. Wilson

#i #novels #objective #objective truth #people

I'm a writer by profession and it's totally clear to me that since I started blogging, the amount I write has increased exponentially, my daily interactions with the views of others have never been so frequent, the diversity of voices I engage with is far higher than in the pre-Internet age—and all this has helped me become more modest as a thinker, more open to error, less fixated on what I do know, and more respectful of what I don't. If this is a deterioration in my brain, then more, please. "The problem is finding the space and time when this engagement stops, and calm, quiet, thinking and reading of longer-form arguments, novels, essays can begin. Worse, this also needs time for the mind to transition out of an instant gratification mode to me a more long-term, thoughtful calm. I find this takes at least a day of detox. Getting weekends back has helped. But if there were a way to channel the amazing insights of blogging into the longer, calmer modes of thinking ... we'd be getting somewhere. "I'm working on it. ↗

— Andrew Sullivan

#blogging #essays #humility #internet #media