Certainly, light fiction exists and encompasses mysteries or second-class romance novels, books that are read on the beach, whose only aim is to entertain. These books are not concerned with style or creativity - instead they are successful because t...
Adolescence is like a heavy rain. Even though you catch a cold from it, you still look forward to experiencing it once again. (From 'In Those Bygone Years, The Girl We All Went After' the novel)
I'm like any other kid; I've seen the monsters in the closet and under the bed. The only difference between me and other kids is...the monsters are afraid of me..." (Angel) Night School: A Dasheen "Angel" Vampire Hunter novel
I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it.
By asking a novel question that you don't know the answer to, you discover whether you can formulate a way of finding the answer, and you stretch your own mind, and very often you learn something new.
I've always felt that the traditional novel doesn't give you enough information about the narrator, and I think it's important to know the point of view from which these tales are told: the moral makeup of the teller.
Working on an adaptation is not as satisfying, because it's not your original work: you're interpreting. With 'L.A. Confidential,' I loved the book. In that case, I felt I was guardian of the work, staying as true to the novel as I could. I've since ...
The real question is: How do you react? What do you do next? Evade responsibilities? Bury yourself in work? What do you do? All three of my novels take up that question, although none gives an answer.
When I was asked to play 'Miss Marple,' I was given the Kevin Elyot script for 'The Body in the Library.' I was a fan of his theatre work anyway, and I just thought it was brilliant. I was immediately taken by 'Miss Marple,' so I read some of the nov...
I don't take notes. I don't have any notebooks. I keep on trying to do that because it seems like a very writerly thing to do, but my mind doesn't work that way. I tend to get the idea for a novel in a big splash.
A novel can be set in motion by an incident, a character, a location, a mood - by anything at all. Sometimes the stimulus can be an idea, which will rapidly clothe itself in character and incident. 'Foreign Bodies' came about through the contemplatio...
'The Accursed' is very much a novel about social injustice as the consequence of the terrible, tragic division of classes - the exploitation not only of poor and immigrant workers but of their young children in factories and mills - and as the conseq...
Well, for instance, why does everything always have to be written from the point of view of a human being? Why not write from the point of view of a cat? Or a tree?
I don't judge those who can't dream, those who need to pierce their arms to create different worlds under their skin, because I am fortunate in the tools of my escapes
I was disinterested in everything, even in Ethan. Even, I was ashamed to admit, in Ella. I didn’t know where else I wanted to be but I knew it was anywhere except on this earth, in my body, living my life.
There is a war out there, and believe me, Fly, it was never really between Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Crusaders and Confucius. The final battle is between those who love, respect, and liberate the body and those who hate it
When you read a novel, it seems that everything is clear, trite and understandable. But when you yourself fall in love, you understand that nobody knows anything and everyone must decide for themselves.
There is not one big cosmic meaning for all; there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.
What is realized in the novel is the process of coming to know one's own language as it is perceived in someone else's language, coming to know one's own belief system in someone else's system.
Japan is the first nation in the world to accord 'comic books'--originally a 'humorous' form of entertainment mainly for young people--nearly the same social status as novels and films.
Some writers, no matter how good they are, can't speak to us. Something about the way they see the world, I think, string sentences together, alienates us as surely as the ramblings of a madman on a bus.
