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

“The unwounded life bears no resemblance to the Rabbi.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

“A well-thought-out story doesn’t need to resemble real life. Life itself tries with all its might to resemble a well-crafted story.”

Isaac Babel (1894–1940) Russian language journalist, playwright, literary translator, and short story writer

“Romance novels are birthday cake and life is often peanut butter and jelly. I think everyone should have lots of delicious romance novels lying around for those times when the peanut butter of life gets stuck to the roof of your mouth.”

Janet Evanovich (1943) Novelist

“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 (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

“Nothing resembles selfishness more closely than self-respect”

George Sand Indiana

“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

“History has no more validity than a novel.”

David Lane (white nationalist) (1938–2007) American white supremacist, convicted felon

“Life is God's novel. Let him write it.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

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

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon