All the great novels are about obsession and people who are obsessed.

~ Marty Rubin

Marty Rubin Fiction Literature Obsession The Novel

To be fair to them, they were only after something that walled them off from the past and from people in general, not something that offered any connection that might prove painful or human. Thet wanted stories, I came to realise, in which they were already imprisoned, not stories in which they appeared along with the storyteller, accomplices in escaping.

~ Richard Flanagan

Richard Flanagan Literature Stories The Novel Transcendence

If a novel's salient aim is virtue, I want to throw it against the wall.

~ Cynthia Ozick

Cynthia Ozick Art Literature The Novel Writing

Get thee to the novel! - the novel, that word-woven submarine, piloted by intimation and intuition, that will dive you to the deeps of the heart's maelstrom.

~ Cynthia Ozick

Cynthia Ozick Art Literature The Novel