Love is more pleasant than marriage for the same reason that novels are more amusing than history. Nicolas Chamfort
Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life. George Sand
The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and thus the novelists discoveries, however old they may be, will never cease to astonish. Milan Kundera
I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written. W. Somerset Maugham
I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex. Kurt Vonnegut
The bourgeoisie loves so-called "positive” types and novels with happy endings since they lull one into thinking that it is fine to simultaneously acquire capital and maintain one's innocence, to be a beast and still be happy. Anton Chekhov