Engrossing Narrative Quotes

This dazzling, unput-downable debut novel proves beyond a doubt that Dan Wells has the gift. His teenage protagonist is as chilling as he is endearing. More John Wayne Cleaver, please.

Yeah, I just finished a novel. Man those things take forever to read.

What I really mean is that a great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.

We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page; we begin to see images.

Songs you can dip in and out of, but a book... well, it can overpower you.

'Mystic River' just smelled interesting to me. So I read it and liked it right away. Even the dialogue in it was great.

As a reader, I want a book to kidnap me into its world. Its world must make my so-called real world seem flimsy. Its world must lure me to return. When I close the book, I should feel bereft.

"Unputdownable" is, I suppose, something we all dream of, maybe without knowing it. I realized, some time ago, that a novel can hold a lot, and it made sense that this one was not of the sleek and economical variety, but instead the "full" type. Novel as piñata. And the reader does the whacking. I had a central idea, which is to look at what happens to talent over time.

My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: when you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.

When I'm really into a novel, I'm seeing the world differently during that time— not just for the hour or so in the day when I get to read. I'm actually walking around in a haze, spellbound by the book and looking at everything through a different prism.

The most improbable tales can be made believable, if your reader, through his sense, feels certain that he stands at the middle of events.

I work on the assumption, or let it be the fear, that the reader will stop reading if I stop being interesting.

Afterwards, in bed with a book, the spell of television feels remote compared to the journey into the page. To be in a book. To slip into the crease where two pages meet, to live in the place where your eyes alight upon the words to ignite a world of smoke and peril, colour and serene delight. That is a journey no one can end with the change of a channel. Enduring magic.

I've seen 'True Detective' end-to-end at least three times; I'll probably see it again. It is a work of dark brilliance. But if the phone goes fifteen minutes from the end of that last episode, I'll likely turn it off and go make coffee when I'm done with the call.

My books flow. People say they pick them up and they can't put them down. It's because when I'm writing them I pick my pen up and I cannot put my pen down.

Donna Tartt blows me away - that impeccable writing, so rich you could eat it and so luminous that it lights up the whole room, and the way she brings her characters to life so completely and in such fine detail that you know them as intimately as your dearest friends.

I hadn’t read a real series like that since I was a kid, and it was exciting to live again in an infinite fiction.

I took the volume to a table, opened its soft, ivory pages... and fell into it as into a pool during dry season.

When a reader finishes a wonderful story and lays it aside, he should have to pause for a minute and collect himself.

That was the best kind of story: when the teller was as much under its spell as the listener.

I live for those rare and delicious moments when the words on the page take off and I am the bystander, watching as the tale shows me what will happen next.

Nothing is too long or too short either if you have a true and interesting tale and what I call a "graphic" writing style combined with educational aims.

This was almost two hours of factual documentary. In our audience ratings, barely no one left the programme. The whole of his life is so fascinating and people kept watching for that reason.

I want to make sure that my writing grips the reader from the word 'go.'

I'm always in search of those books where you don't want to stop reading, and 'Me Before You' is at the top of that list.