Novel
Quotations about the novel.
- Axiom: Novel must have either one living character or a perfect pattern: fails otherwise.
- E. M. Forster, Commonplace Book (1985), p. 6
- But I have seen my obstacles: trivialities, learning and poetry. This last needs explaining: the old artist's readiness to dissolve characters into a haze. Characters cannot come alive and fight and guide the world unless the novelist wants them to remain characters.
- E. M. Forster, Commonplace Book (1985), p. 151
- As for 'story' I never yet did enjoy a novel or play in which someone didn't tell me afterward that there was something wrong with the story, so that's going to be no drawback as far as I'm concerned. "Good Lord, why am I so bored"—"I know; it must be the plot developing harmoniously." So I often reply to myself, and there rises before me my special nightmare—that of the writer as craftsman, natty and deft.
- E. M. Forster, Selected Letters (1985), letter 104, to Forrest Reid, 19 June 1912
