I have always argued, in a good novel, interesting things happen to interesting people.
Writing a novel is like working on foreign policy. There are problems to be solved. It's not all inspirational.
In a novel, my feelings and sense of outrage can find a broader means of expression which would be more symbolic and applicable to many European countries.
So many Indian novels, quite unfairly, do not get the prominence they should because they have been written in a language other than English.
I've never been that person who thought that because I've written one novel, I should write another and another. It's only when there was another novel to write that I was going to write another.
There are some short essays that are very grave, and most contemporary novels are lighter than air.
Is a novel anything but a trap set for a hero?
I have a different purpose in writing each novel. Some of them seem more similar than others, but the purposes are always different.
I never even had the time to read novels.
An old novel has a history of its own.
Just getting something to work usually means writing reams of code fast, like a Stephen King novel, but making it maintainable and high-quality code that really expresses the ideas well, is like writing poetry. Art is taking away.
I wasn't aware I'd write the novel when I wrote the New Yorker story either. And the narration of their construction in 10:04 is fiction, however flickering.
I've never made an outline for any novel that I've written. Never.
I am the suburb of a non-existent town, the prolix commentary on a book never written. I am nobody, nobody. I am a character in a novel which remains to be written, and I float, aerial, scattered without ever having been, among the dreams of a creature who did not know how to finish me off.
Keep on the lookout for novel ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea has to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you're working on.
Fun has to do with habitual activities but then also terrifically novel or unusual ones. It works as a sort of strange milkshake of those concepts.
I have a really good idea for a novel and would like to just kind of try my hand at fiction. I'm starting to kind of get a really good body of work going from a literary standpoint. As long as the audience is there, man, I'll keep cranking them out.
The battle with the bottle is nothing so novel.
Novel writing should never be confused with journalism. Unfortunately, in the case of Primary Colors, a fair number of journalists confused.
I love to read about anger. A "feel bad" book always makes me feel good. And no other novel in the history of literature is more depressing than Christina Stead's The Man Who Loved Children.