In literature, certain lines resonate deeply, transcending the pages to leave an indelible mark on our minds and hearts. Quotes from novels have the power to encapsulate complex emotions, unveil universal truths, and inspire introspection, often lingering with us longer than the stories themselves. Whether it's a phrase that captures the essence of love, a sentence that articulates the struggle of human existence, or a line that ignites hope, these memorable excerpts serve as both mirrors and guides. In this post, we've curated a collection of 46 unforgettable quotes from novels that not only showcase the eloquence and insight of their authors but also speak to the timeless human experience. Join us as we explore these gems of literary wisdom, which continue to inspire readers across generations.
1. “I came, I saw, I concurred...” - Darren E. Laws
2. “We all dream dreams of unity, of purity; we all dream that there's an authoritative voice out there that will explain things, including ourselves. If it wasn't for our longing for these things, I doubt the novel or the short story would exist in its current form. I'm not going to say much more on the topic. Just remember: In dictatorships, only one person is really allowed to speak. And when I write a book or a story, I too am the only one speaking, no matter how I hide behind my characters.” - Junot Diaz
3. “All novels are sequels; influence is bliss.” - Michael Chabon
4. “A novel must show how the world truly is, how characters genuinely think, how events actually occur. A novel should somehow reveal the true source of our actions.” - Kevin Hood
5. “and if a rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and dirt, and shut themselves up, to read novels together. Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel–writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding — joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities of the nine–hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens — there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them. “I am no novel–reader — I seldom look into novels — Do not imagine that I often read novels — It is really very well for a novel.” Such is the common cant. “And what are you reading, Miss — ?” “Oh! It is only a novel!” replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. “It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda”; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best–chosen language. Now, had the same young lady been engaged with a volume of the Spectator, instead of such a work, how proudly would she have produced the book, and told its name; though the chances must be against her being occupied by any part of that voluminous publication, of which either the matter or manner would not disgust a young person of taste: the substance of its papers so often consisting in the statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and topics of conversation which no longer concern anyone living; and their language, too, frequently so coarse as to give no very favourable idea of the age that could endure it.” - Jane Austen
6. “Remember where you are and adjust yourself accordingly, not vice-versa ... otherwise, you might be toast.” - Alisa Dana Steinberg
7. “The anxiety, which in this state of their attachment must be the portion of Henry and Catherine, and of all who loved either, as to its final event, can hardly extend, I fear, to the bosom of my readers, who will see in the tell-tale compression of the pages before them, that we are all hastening together to perfect felicity.” - Jane Austen
8. “Life is painful and disappointing. It is useless, therefore, to write new realistic novels. We generally know where we stand in relation to reality and don’t care to know any more.” - Michel Houellebecq
9. “It is practically an axiom in psychiatry that precocious intellect combined with physical weakness can give rise to many unpleasant character traits - avarice, delusions of grandeur , and obsessive masturbation, to name just a few. ” - Sam Savage
10. “The main question to a novel is -- did it amuse? were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? did you mistake eleven for ten? were you too late to dress? and did you sit up beyond the usual hour? If a novel produces these effects, it is good; if it does not -- story, language, love, scandal itself cannot save it. It is only meant to please; and it must do that or it does nothing.” - Sydney Smith
11. “The dull people decided years and years ago, as everyone knows, that novel-writing was the lowest species of literary exertion, and that novel reading was a dangerous luxury and an utter waste of time.” - Wilkie Collins
12. “Ah, Sir, a novel is a mirror carried along a high road. At one moment it reflects to your vision the azure skies, at another the mire of the puddles at your feet. And the man who carries this mirror in his pack will be accused by you of being immoral! His mirror shews the mire, and you blame the mirror! Rather blame that high road upon which the puddle lies, still more the inspector of roads who allows the water to gather and the puddle to form.” - Stendhal
13. “Do not start me on The Da Vinci Code ... a novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name."(Discussion at Woodruff Auditorium in Lawrence, KS; October 7, 2005.)” - Salman Rushdie
14. “The English novels are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed. But one should not be too severe on them. They show a want of knowledge that must be the result of years of study.” - Oscar Wilde
15. “I think: perhaps the sky is a huge sea of fresh water and we, instead of walking under it, walk on top of it; perhaps we see everything upside down and the earth is a kind of sky, so that when we die, when we die, we fall and sink into the sky.The Implacable Order of Things” - José Luis Peixoto
16. “I have almost completed a long novel, but it is unpublishable until my death and England's.” - E.M. Forster
17. “The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything. When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel to the entire subsequent history of the novel. The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead. The totalitarian world, whether founded on Marx, Islam, or anything else, is a world of answers rather than questions. There, the novel has no place.” - Milan Kundera
18. “It is untrue that fiction is nonutilitarian. The uses of fiction are synonymous with the uses of literature. They include refreshment, clarification of life, self-awareness, expansion of our range of experiences, and enlargement of our sense of understanding and discovery, perception, intensification, expression, beauty , and understanding. Like literature generally, fiction is a form of discovery, perception, intensification, expression, beauty, and understanding. If it is all these things, the question of whether it is a legitimate use of time should not even arise.” - Leland Ryken
19. “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
20. “It's my contention that each book creates its own structure and its own length. I've written three or four slim books. It may be that the next novel is a big one, but I don't know.” - Don DeLillo
21. “I now understand that writing fiction was a seed planted in my soul, though I would not be ready to grow that seed for a long time.” - Sue Monk Kidd
22. “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
23. “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
24. “"It almost felt like the dolphin of my heart’s desire playing in the ocean of my life." - on writing” - Mariam Kobras
25. “My brother Keith begged to go with us as usual. He'll turn thirteen in a few days - August 14 - and the thought of waiting two more years until he's 15 must seem impossible to him. I understand. Waiting is terrible. Waiting to be older is worse than other kinds of waiting because there's nothing you can do to make it happen faster.” - Octavia Butler
26. “There is no endTo what a living worldWill demand of you.” - Octavia E. Butler
27. “She found herself longing for home-not just for the hotel but for New York and all the real novels that she could lose herself in there.” - Anna Godbersen
28. “There are three secrets to writing a novel. Unfortunately nobody knows what they are.” - W. Somerset Maugham
29. “I looked for any footmarks of course, but naturally, with all this rain, there wasn't a sign. Of course, if this were a detective story, there'd have been a convenient shower exactly an hour before the crime and a beautiful set of marks which could only have come there between two and three in the morning, but this being real life in a London November, you might as well expect footprints in Niagara. I searched the roofs right along—and came to the jolly conclusion that any person in any blessed flat in the blessed row might have done it.” - Dorothy L. Sayers
30. “If you only write when inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you'll never be a novelist.” - Neil Gaiman
31. “I like what I do. Some writers have said in print that they hated writing and it was just a chore and a burden. I certainly don't feel that way about it. Sometimes it's difficult. You know, you always have this image of the perfect thing which you can never achieve, but which you never stop trying to achieve. But I think ... that's your signpost and your guide. You'll never get there, but without it you won't get anywhere.[Interview with Oprah Winfrey, June 5, 2007]” - Cormac McCarthy
32. “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
33. “Early on, for better or worse, I chose whose child I wanted to be: the child of the novel. Almost everything else was subjugated to this ruling passion, reading stories. As a consequence, I can barely add a column of double digits, I have not the slightest idea of how a plane flies, I can't draw any better than a five-year-old.” - zadie smith
34. “تحبني لأننا نتشابه كثيرا ونختلف أكثر، وأحبك لأنك تلهمني وتفهمني وتتقبل جنوني.” - لطيفة الحاج
35. “هل تتساءل أنت عن شكل وجهي؟ هل تراه في وجوه النساء؟ أنت لا تسألني شيئا.. كأنك تريد فقط أن تتحدث إلى شخص تعرف أنه يحب الاستماع إليك، ثم تطلب منه أن يدعو لك، كأنني متسولة تتصدق علي بكلماتك ثم قبل أن ترحل تطلب مني أن أدعو لك.” - لطيفة الحاج
36. “أبدا لا أفهمك، أبدا، لكنني كما يقول بهاء طاهر "لا أعرف أسماء الزهور ولكني أحبها".. لا أفهمك تماماً.. ولكني أحبك!” - لطيفة الحاج
37. “نحن حين نحب لا نتساءل على الأعمار، لا تشغلنا الظروف، لا تؤرقنا الحقائق، ولا تهمنا الصغائر.” - لطيفة الحاج
38. “Because we want to know things, how the pieces fit. Talkers seduce, words direct us into corners. We want more than anything to grow and change. Brave new world.” - Michael Ondaatje
39. “Everything that ever happened to me that was important happened in the desert.” - Michael Ondaatje
40. “...you mean you don't fit characters into a plot? excatly...” - John Geddes A Familiar Rain
41. “A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished. Marathoners have to carefully pace themselves so that they don't run out of energy (or in the case of the novelist-- ideas) because they have so far to run. To mix the metaphor, writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage.” - Jonathan Carroll
42. “The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human.” - Michael Ondaatje
43. “Every serious novel is, beyond its immediate thematic preoccupations, a discussion of the craft, a conquest of the form, a conflict with its difficulties and a pursuit of its felicities and beauty.” - Ralph Ellison
44. “A novel is not an allegory, I said as the period was about to come to an end. It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won't be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing.” - Azar Nafisi
45. “There is much to discover that's not on the back cover!” - E.A. Bucchianeri
46. “The clock ticks; the taunting rhythm serving as a reminder that forward is the only way we can go. The mechanical heartbeat of the darkness, a cold ellipsis, punctuating years gone by. Arising unchained.No glorious hymn, just the steady beat of the illusion of time. We heal or we carry forward the weight of our wounds... To believe otherwise is the mendacity of desperation. Arising honestly. The miles behind are littered with the weight of nostalgia, but too many miles lay ahead us to carry the weight. In the end, even echoes fade away. Pen in hand...Arising to write the next chapter.(MU Articles 2013, Dedication to Joey)” - Shannon L. Alder
