How to Grow a Novel Quotes

“In our not-yet-acknowledged secret garden lie the seeds of some of our best not-yet-written stories”
― Sol Stein, How to Grow a Novel: The Most Common Mistakes Writers Make and How to Overcome Them

“A writer writes what other people only think.”
― Sol Stein, How to Grow a Novel: The Most Common Mistakes Writers Make and How to Overcome Them

“I see manuscripts and books that are spoiled for the literary reader because they are one long stream of top-of-the-head writing, a writer telling a story without concern for precision or freshness in the use of language. Some of this storytelling reads as if it were spoken rather than written, stuffed with tired images that pop into the writer's head because they are so familiar. The top of the head is fit for growing hair, but not for generating fine prose.”
― Sol Stein, How to Grow a Novel: The Most Common Mistakes Writers Make and How to Overcome Them

“The Art & Craft of Novel Writing by Oakley”
― Sol Stein, How to Grow a Novel: The Most Common Mistakes Writers Make and How to Overcome Them

“When a totalitarian state wants to attack the culture of a people, it makes a bonfire of its books, a source of pain even to people who have not read most of the volumes heaped onto the fire. Books are symbolic not only of the pleasures and insights derived from them, but also as the safe harbor of the knowledge that passes from one generation to the next. Burning books is an attempt to stop time, to cut short the progression from monks copying books important to their beliefs, to the end of the twentieth century, when tens of millions of people rely on books as providers of knowledge and extraordinary experience. Why else give twelve hours of life over to a book, which is what we’re asking our readers to do?”
― Sol Stein, How to Grow a Novel: The Most Common Mistakes Writers Make and How to Overcome Them