32 Memorable Quotes From Novels

In the world of literature, certain lines transcend the pages, embedding themselves in our minds and hearts. These unforgettable quotes capture the essence of a story, reflect profound truths, or resonate with our own personal experiences. Whether you're a dedicated bibliophile or a casual reader, there's something undeniably magical about encountering a quote that speaks to you so deeply it becomes a part of your life's narrative. In this exploration, we present a curated collection of 32 memorable quotes from novels that have left an indelible mark on readers across generations. Each quote offers a window into the world of fiction, where words are not just written, but felt. Join us on this journey through some of literature's most poignant and impactful expressions.

1. “I came, I saw, I concurred...” - Darren E. Laws

2. “All novels are sequels; influence is bliss.” - Michael Chabon

3. “I have often wondered, Sir, [. . .] to observe so few Instances of Charity among Mankind; for tho' the Goodness of a Man's Heart did not incline him to relieve the Distresses of his Fellow-Creatures, methinks the Desire of Honour should move him to it. What inspires a Man to build fine Houses, to purchase fine Furniture, Pictures, Clothes, and other things at a great Expence, but an Ambition to be respected more than other People? Now would not one great Act of Charity, one Instance of redeeming a poor Family from all the Miseries of Poverty, restoring an unfortunate Tradesman by a Sum of Money to the means of procuring a Livelihood by his Industry, discharging an undone Debtor from his Debts or a Goal, or any such Example of Goodness, create a Man more Honour and Respect than he could acquire by the finest House, Furniture, Pictures or Clothes that were ever beheld? For not only the Object himself who was thus relieved, but all who heard the Name of such a Person must, I imagine, reverence him infinitely more than the Possessor of all those other things: which when we so admire, we rather praise the Builder, the Workman, the Painter, the Laceman, the Taylor, and the rest, by whose Ingenuity they are produced, than the Person who by his Money makes them his own.” - Henry Fielding

4. “Novels for me are how I find out what's going on in my own head. And so that's a really useful and indeed critical thing to do when you do as many of these other things as I do.” - Cory Doctorow

5. “I read anything that’s going to be interesting. But you don’t know what it is until you’ve read it. Somewhere in a book on the history of false teeth there’ll be the making of a novel.” - Terry Pratchett

6. “i love purple and blue!!!!!” - Alyson Noel

7. “The novels we read allow us to encounter possible persons, versions of ourselves hat we would never see, never permit ourselves to see, never permit ourselves to become, in places we can never go and might not care to, while assuring that we get to return home again” - Thomas C. Foster

8. “I wonder what the retirement age is in the novel business.The day you die.” - Yasunari Kawabata

9. “He shivered. His coat was thin, and it was obvious he would not get his kiss, which he found puzzling. The manly heroes of the penny dreadfuls and shilling novels never had these problems getting kissed.” - Neil Gaiman

10. “When I work, I'm just translating the world around me in what seems to be straightforward terms. For my readers, this is sometimes a vision that's not familiar. But I'm not trying to manipulate reality. This is just what I see and hear.” - Don DeLillo

11. “Diana felt she was beginning to understand why, in all those novels she read, the headiest loves were the loves that couldn't be.” - Anna Godbersen

12. “A short story I have written long ago would barge into my house in the middle of the night, shake me awake and shout, 'Hey,this is no time for sleeping! You can't forget me, there's still more to write!' Impelled by that voice, I would find myself writing a novel. In this sense, too, my short stories and novels connect inside me in a very natural, organic way.” - Haruki Murakami

13. “Find the things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to let them go.” - Lauren Oliver

14. “Henry James said there isn't any difference between "the English novel" and "the American novel" since there are only two kinds of novels at all, the good and the bad.” - Eudora Welty

15. “Art, though, is never the voice of a country; it is an even more precious thing, the voice of the individual, doing its best to speak, not comfort of any sort, but truth. And the art that speaks it most unmistakably, most directly, most variously, most fully, is fiction; in particular, the novel.” - Eudora Welty

16. “We trust to novels to train us in the practice of great indignations and great generositie.” - Henry James

17. “[T]he success of every novel -- if it's a novel of action -- depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, "What are my big scenes?" and then get every drop of juice out of them."(Interview, The Paris Review, Issue 64, Winter 1975)” - P.G. Wodehouse

18. “There are three secrets to writing a novel. Unfortunately nobody knows what they are.” - W. Somerset Maugham

19. “If you only write when you’re inspired you may be a fairly decent poet, but you’ll never be a novelist because you’re going to have to make your word count today and those words aren’t going to wait for you whether you’re inspired or not.You have to write when you’re not inspired. And you have to write the scenes that don’t inspire you. And the weird thing is that six months later, a year later, you’ll look back at them and you can’t remember which scenes you wrote when you were inspired and which scenes you just wrote because they had to be written next.The process of writing can be magical. …Mostly it’s a process of putting one word after another.” - Neil Gaiman

20. “Novels can tell us so much about life. They have the power to enrich our own lives in so many different ways. They're not just for entertaining us, although that would be enough.” - Victoria Connelly

21. “While art thrives on the blazing colours of scandal, literature blossoms on the dark soil of tragedy.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

22. “After all, isn't the purpose of the novel, or of a museum, for that matter, to relate our memories with such sincerity as to transform individual happiness into a happiness all can share?” - Orhan Pamuk

23. “تحبني، فأنا المختلفة وأنا الأفضل، وأنا التي لك قلبي يغص بالأمنيات، وأنت الأمنية الجميلة التي تمنيت منذ سنوات مراهقتي الأولى أن تتحقق.” - لطيفة الحاج

24. “قرأت مرة: يسهل على الرجل أن يحب المرأة التي تستمع له. أنا استمع لك كل الوقت، بكل حواسي، فهل سيأتي اليوم الذي تحبني فيه؟” - لطيفة الحاج

25. “أنا نجمة لأنك القمر الذي يحتاج نوري، أو أني نجمة بعيدة صغيرة وأنت القمر وسيد السماء.” - لطيفة الحاج

26. “وحده البكاء والحزن كان يحتضن وحدتي، وحدتي التي وددت لو تخترقها بكلماتك، لو تسمح لي على الأقل بأن أحبك على طريقي، بأن أقول لك كل شيء عني، بأن تتقبل ثرثراتي ولا تتمنى أن أختفي من الكون أنا التي صارت أمنيتي الوحيدة أن يخلو الكون من الناس وتبقى أنت.” - لطيفة الحاج

27. “And she did what nobody thought of doing... she consulted Anne.” - Jane Austen

28. “Sometimes you can write about a character's day in under a minute and sometimes it takes a day just to write about a minute.” - Jennifer v Clancy

29. “Ruskin says that anyone who expects perfection from a work of art knows nothing of works of art. This is an appealing sentence that, so far as I can see, is not true about a few pictures and statues and pieces of music, short stories and short poems. Whether or not you expect perfection from them, you get it; at least, there is nothing in them that you would want changed. But what Ruskin says is true about novels: anyone who expects perfection from even the greatest novel knows nothing of novels.” - Randall Jarrell

30. “Life is'nt about getting everything you want the instant you want it.Some thing are worth waiting for.” - mira lyn kelly

31. “Ivanov: And this whole romance of ours is commonplace and trite: he lost heart, and he lost his way. She came along, strong and brave in spirit, and gave him an helping hand. That's all very well and plausible in novels, but in life...Sasha: In life it's the same.Ivanov: I see you have a fine understanding of life!” - Anton Chekhov

32. “There is much to discover that's not on the back cover!” - E.A. Bucchianeri