I don't think you can tell the objective truth about a person. That's why people write novels.

- A. N. Wilson

I've always been charmed by houses, and descriptions of them are prominent in my novels. So prominent, in fact, that my editor once pointed out to me that all of my early novels had houses on the covers.

- Anita Shreve

All of my novels are democracies.

- Amos Oz

I don't write historical novels but novels that wonder, 'And what if it happened in this way and not in this other one?'

- Alvaro Enrigue

Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence - a lot passes you by - simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.

- Anita Brookner

Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth.

- Anatole Broyard

I think novels are profoundly autobiographical. If writers deny that, they are lying. Or if it's really true, then I think it's a mistake.

- Amity Gaige

I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.

- Alice Hoffman

I never plot out my novels in terms of the tone of the book. Hopefully, once a story is begun it reveals itself.

- Alice Hoffman

Serial novels have an unexpected effect; they hook the writer as well as the reader.

- Alexander McCall Smith

It's with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.

- Aldous Huxley

I spend about a year between novels.

- Anne Tyler

I save the best of myself for novels, and I believe it shows.

- Anne Tyler

The idea that people in novels should be more sympathetic than people in life simply baffles me.

- Andrew O'Hagan

I write about the period 1933-42, and I read books written during those years: books by foreign correspondents of the time, histories of the time written contemporaneously or just afterwards, autobiographies and biographies of people who were there, present-day histories of the period, and novels written during those times.

- Alan Furst

I write what I call 'novels of consolation' for people who are bright and sophisticated.

- Alan Furst

Spy novels are traditionally about lone wolves, but how many people actually live like that?

- Alan Furst

You know, I read graphic novels but not encyclopedically.

- Aisha Tyler

Novels are such mysterious and amorphous and tender things.

- Arundhati Roy

I started out as a poet. I've always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.

- Alice Walker