“Writing a novel is not very difficult: you simply write ten pages a day for a month and then you have a novel.”

“To write a novel, you begin with what you can see and then you add what came before and what came after.

… You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It's all there and you just have to find it.”

Thomas Harris Red Dragon

“You have to wait for your mind to catch up with whatever it is it’s working on; then you can write a novel.”

James M. Cain (1892–1977) Novelist, short story writer, journalist

“Writing a novel is agony.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

“You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It's all there and you just have to find it.”

Thomas Harris Red Dragon

“I don’t consider myself a successful screenwriter. I write screenplays because I have no choice. Often I’m simply the director’s last resort. I think that good novel-writing emphasizes characterization. It’s the personality that makes a good movie or novel character unforgettable.”

Geling Yan (1958) Chinese writer and screenwriter

“I write whenever it suits me. During a creative period I write every day; a novel should not be interrupted.”

Francois Mauriac (1885–1970) French author

“I'll write to you. A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

“The problem of the novel is to stay truthful. The short story, if you really are intense and you have an exciting idea, writes itself in a few hours.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

“The central problem of novel-writing is causality.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature