Skip to Content

'A novel is more like falling in love.'

10 February 2014

'It's very bad to write a novel by act of will. I can do a book of nonfiction that way - just sign the contract and do the book because, provided the topic has some meaning for me, I know I can do it. A novel is more like falling in love. You don't say, "I'm going to fall in love next Tuesday, I'm going to begin my novel." The novel has to come to you. It has to feel just like love.'

Norman Mailer, author of The Executioner's Song and The Fight, interviewed in 2009, in The Times