Are you an entrepreneur looking for inspiration? Here are some of the best quotes about business and entrepreneurship to help motivate you. These sayings will remind you why you decided to start your own company and push through the tough times. So, if you’re feeling stuck or discouraged, read on for some words of wisdom from some of the most successful entrepreneurs out there.

1. A caprice is handled like a stew, and the pepper is added at the last minute. — Rachilde, Monsieur Venus: A Materialist Novel

2. Being the Novelist–in–Residence at a riad hotel in the kasbah of an Arabic North African city is a lot like trying to write one’s memoirs on shreds of napkins in a nuthouse. — Roman Payne

3. The whole world’s writing novels, but nobody’s reading them. — Robert Galbraith, The Silkworm

4. The real novelist, the perfectly simple human being, could go on, indefinitely imaging. — Virginia Woolf, The Waves

5. This novel is fiction, except for the parts that aren’t. — Michael Crichton

6. Anyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at fifteen to write several novels. — May Sarton

7. People who actually tell stories, meaning people who write novels and make feature films, don’t see themselves as storytellers. — Stefan Sagmeister

8. I’ve never yet managed to write a novel which didn’t have an Indian central character. — Salman Rushdie

9. I have just read a long novel by Henry James. Much of it made me think of the priest condemned for a long space to confess nuns. — W.B. Yeats

10. I started my career as a novelist. ‘Veronica Mars’ was first imagined as a novel. — Rob Thomas

11. Taken together the Internet reads like the grandest character–driven novel humanity has ever known. Not much plot though. — Victor LaValle

12. Whuppins were like kid taxes we paid with our behinds. — Terris McMahan Grimes, Smelling Herself: A Novel

13. With Mr. Montgomery, I set out to see what it would be like to write a novel in 30 days. It was hell! I’d do it again in a minute. — Nadlee Thims, Mr. Montgomery

14. I sometimes think novelists write about sex in order to avoid boring themselves to death. — Walker Percy

15. Darling, in this family we don’t call anyone a novelist who has not written more books than Jane Austen. — Pansy Schneider–Horst

16. In these days of faith–cures, and hypnotism, and telepathy, and subliminalities–why, the simple old world grows very confusing. But rarely, very rarely novel. — Walter de la Mare, The Return

17. Ruth was a novelist, and novelists, Oliver asserted, should have cats and books. — Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

18. It is only a woman who can make a man feel like a ‘superhero’ or ‘inadequate’.Its her attention and admiration that a man desperately seeks! — Sanjai Velayudhan, Dance of the Spirits: A Novel

19. Time limits tend to turn everything predictable and mundane into a novelty. — Rhian J. Martin, A Different Familiar

20. If you’re not the hero of your own novel, then what kind of novel is it? You need to do some heavy editing. — Terence Mckenna

21. People who actually tell stories, meaning people who write novels and make feature films, don’t see themselves as storytellers. — Stefan Sagmeister

22. Passionate attraction to someone of the opposite sex will make a hero or a fool of a novelist each time. — Roman Payne, Europa: Limited Time Edition

23. I can imagine her memories of the novel, or, more likely, of who she was and how she felt when reading it. — Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

24. When one starts writing a book, especially a novel, even the humblest person in the world hopes to become Homer. — Umberto Eco

25. The Apple Pie Hubbub was a significant novel for me, because that’s when I first started using verbs. — Steve Martin

26. I believe one has to escape oneself to discover oneself. — Rabih Alameddine, I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters

27. He was a guy who talked with commas, like a heavy novel. Over the phone anyway. — Raymond Chandler

28. Common sense is only irritating in other people — Martyn V. Halm, Peccadillo: A Katla Novel

29. There are three secrets to writing a novel. Unfortunately nobody knows what they are. — W. Somerset Maugham

30. Don’t make a novel to establish a principle of political economy. You will spoil both. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

31. A good novel tells us the truth about its hero — but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

32. Although some people think I am a romantic novelist I have always thought of myself as a rather gritty radical historian. — Philippa Gregory

33. What’s the challenge in writing a novel that few people will read? I’m more than happy writing what I do and have no plans to change that. — Nicholas Sparks

34. Americans are so tightly wound, the way they kill themselves to get ahead. It’s no way to live, I tell you. — Shilpi Somaya Gowda, The Golden Son: A Novel

35. Adventure, the first great theme of the novel. — Milan Kundera

36. If you read the novel in more than two weeks, you don’t read the novel really — Philip Roth

37. Adventure, the first great theme of the novel. — Milan Kundera

38. Middlemarch, the magnificent book which with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels for grown–up people. — Virginia Woolf

39. Henderson, I LOVE YOUR NAME. I LOVE YOUR NOVEL. I LOVE YOUR FLANNEL SHIRTS, YOUR SMILE. I LOVE BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND DINOSAURS AND VOLCANOES. — Phoebe Stone, The Boy on Cinnamon Street

40. I do not use profanity in my novels. My characters all go to church. — Nicholas Sparks

41. The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words. — Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

42. Taken together the Internet reads like the grandest character–driven novel humanity has ever known. Not much plot though. — Victor LaValle

43. You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. — Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

44. The movies are fun, but I’m a novelist. In many ways, screenwriting is much easier than writing novels. I find screenplays twenty times easier to write than a novel. — Nicholas Sparks

45. Writers don’t just create pages in a novel, but depth to worlds that become a safe haven for those who wish to escape the reality of their own. — T.J. Mihaila

46. I have a particular dislike for children’s films. I’m way past the novelty aspect. — Nick Cave

47. He was a guy who talked with commas, like a heavy novel. Over the phone anyway. — Raymond Chandler

48. Every once in a while I feel the tremendous force of the novel. But it does not stay with me. — Zane Grey

49. I challenge you to make your life the masterpiece you want to paint, the novel you want to read, the day you want to wake to. — Toni Sorenson

50. The novelist’s business is lying. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Novels are an incredible source of inspiration and motivation. They have the power to make us laugh, cry, think, and learn. These quotes about novels remind us why we love them so much and why they are so important. They remind us to appreciate the beauty of the written word and to never stop reading. So go ahead and pick up your favorite novel and get lost in its pages. Enjoy every moment of it and never forget how special it is to be able to experience the stories that books can tell us.