Men read either the novels it is possible to respect, or detective stories. But their consumption of detective stories is terrific.
novelquotes
There can be no more beautiful spot to die in, no spot more worthy of total despair, than one’s own novel.
I would rather,’ he said, ‘give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel.’ (And here let me pause to make Mr. Douglas a sporting offer. I will provide a healthy boy, a phial of prussic acid, and a copy of The Well of Loneliness, and if he keeps his word and gives the boy the prussic acid I undertake to pay all expenses of his defense at the ensuing murder trial and to erect a monument to his memory after he has been hanged.)
It’s with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.
Deprived of their newspapers or a novel, reading-addicts will fall back onto cookery books, on the literature which is wrapped around bottles of patent medicine, on those instructions for keeping the contents crisp which are printed on the outside of boxes of breakfast cereals. On anything.
A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.