“The novel is the one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on the ether. But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble.”

— D.H. Lawrence

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The novel is the one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on the ether. But the novel as…" by D.H. Lawrence?

D.H. Lawrence 131

English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary crit… 1885–1930

Paul Moon James (1780–1854) British poet and banker

The Beacon, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“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.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

“People don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Source: The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), p. 400

“Any man's life, told truly, is a novel…”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon

“Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life.”

George Sand book Métella

La vie ressemble plus souvent à un roman qu'un roman ne ressemble à la vie.
Metella, ch. 1 (1833); Robert J. Ackerman Perfect Daughters (Deerfield Beach, Fla.: HCI, 2002) p. 31

“The Chinese novel was written primarily to amuse the common people. And when I say amuse I do not mean only to make them laugh, though laughter is also one of the aims of the Chinese novel. I mean amusement in the sense of absorbing and occupying the whole attention of the mind. I mean enlightening that mind by pictures of life and what that life means.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

The Chinese Novel (1938)

“Life is sometimes novel-shaped, mocking the efforts of those authors who, in an effort to make their novels life-shaped, spurn the easy symmetry and cheap resonance of reality.”

Stephen Fry book Moab Is My Washpot

Source: Moab Is My Washpot

“I don't know if Native Son is a good book or a bad book. And I don't know if the book I'm working on now will be a good book or a bad book. And I really don't care. The mere writing of it will be more fun and a deeper satisfaction than any praise or blame from anybody. I feel that I'm lucky to be alive to write novels today, when the whole world is caught in the pangs of war and change.”

Richard Wright (1908–1960) African-American writer

pg. xxxiv
Native Son (1940)

“You can make your superhero a psychopath, you can draw gut-splattering violence, and you can call it a "graphic novel," but comic books are still incredibly stupid.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

“The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

Variant text: The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does compete with life.
The Art of Fiction http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/artfiction.html (1884)

“The novel is the one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on the ether. But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

D.H. Lawrence 131

Related quotes

Related topics