Jane Smiley Novel Quotations

Not every novel that wants to be a tragedy gets to be one.

Trollope wrote so many novels and other works that they tend to crowd each other out.

The desire to write a novel is the single required prerequisite for writing a novel.

Writing novels is an essentially amateur activity.

The main thing about the novel that is totally fascinating: It's not possessed by the writer; it's possessed by the reader.

When a novel has two hundred thousand words, then it is possible for the reader to experience two hundred thousand delights, and to turn back to the first page of the book and experience them all over again, perhaps more intensely.

When a novel has 200,000 words, then it is possible for the reader to experience 200,000 delights, and to turn back to the first page of the book and experience them all over again, perhaps more intensely.

accepted his idea that the audience for a quality novel might not be large enough to support the author by means of commerce; this idea is a truism today, but it was new, even revolutionary, for Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and many of their contemporaries.