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Romance novels satisfy a very specific fantasy of romantic love that seems to be a powerful part of the female psyche.
Sep 30, 2025
I don't write romance novels.
If everybody lived as I do, surely the writing of romance novels would never have come into being.
Only in romance novels or in thrillers people live outside of a social and political context.
As for the military or service professionals, I have nothing but respect for them, but come on, when it comes to romance novels, we all know it's really about the uniforms and how the guys look in them!
I think it's just a matter of time before everybody realizes that I'm kind of a romance novelist ... that these are all stories about people kind of falling back in love or struggling with relationships. Even Fight Club was just a big romantic ending.
All my life I have been reading romance novels. Those stupid books ruined me. I've always wanted that fire that every book I ever read talks about.
I would be rejected if I submitted any of my novels as romance novels.
What do you do when Mom leaves you alone like this? (Kat) I write romance novels. (Acheron)
And then I realized that my sister was trying to LIVE a romance novel. Man, that takes courage and imagination. Well, it also took some degree of mental illness, too, but I was suddenly happy for her. And a little scared. Well, a lot scared.
Recently, I haven't had too much time to read. But I love a good romance novel.
His gaze slid over me like a veil of fire. He could ignite my deepest desires with a single glance. I decided right then and there no more reading romance novels by candelight.
My advice is to write about what you are interested in. If you read science fiction and fantasy, then write in that genre. If you read romance novels, then try writing one.
Romance novels are my favorite books to read. I write young adult romances, and am so happy to be promoting this wonderful genre.
The lust and attraction are often a given in a romance novel - I want to dig into the elements of true friendship that form a foundation for a solid, gonna-last-forever romantic relationship.
There are a lot of snobs out there who disregard these books (romance novels), but they fulfil a need. I am happy and fulfilled in what I am doing and readers love them. And why not? They are harmless and they are fun.
She understood now why her friend Elizabeth, with her near-genius, analytical mind gave wide berth to murder mysteries, psychological thrillers, and horror stories, and read only romance novels. Because, by God, when a woman picked up one of those steamy books, she had a firm guarantee that there would be a Happily-Ever-After. That though the world outside those covers could bring such sorrow and disappointment and loneliness, between those covers, the world was a splendid place to be.
Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides.
Why should I tell you?" he asked, with no small amount of petulance. "If you tell me, I will leave you alone," I said. "And if you don't tell me, I'm going to grab the nearest ghostwritten James Patterson romance novel and I am going to follow you through this store reading it out loud until you relent." Now I could see the fright beneath the defiance.
Dear Mia, What can I say? I don't know all that much about romance novels, but I think you must be the Stephen King of the genre. Your book is hot. Thanks for letting me read it. Anyone who doesn't want to publish it is a fool. Anyway, since I know it's your birthday, and I also know you never remember to back anything up, here's a little something I made for you. It would be a shame if Ransom My Heart got lost before it ever saw the light of day because your hard drive crashed. See you tonight. Love, Michael
My mom wasn't, like, she was reading all these historical romance novels the majority of the time. She read a feminist book and then my dad would sit down and explain it to her like she was an idiot.
I don't try to take a person out of our world and put them into my world; that wouldn't work. It's sort of like bad Photoshop: If you see something Photoshopped together - and even if it's done pretty well - the eye catches on it. That happens a lot when people try to cut and paste people from our world into their fourteenth-century historical romance novel.
Readers understand that the books celebrate female power. In the romance novel, the woman always wins. With courage, intelligence and gentleness she brings the most dangerous creature on the earth, the human male, to his knees.
It's a given that we exist in a world where we have to live in continuity every day; no one is immune to that, in life or romance novels. By the same token, it's not something I find terribly important.
I loved him, but love isn't enough. All the fairy tales, the romance novels, the soap operas; they're all lies. Love does not conquer all.
I still read romance, and I read suspense. I read them both. And part of it is, I like stories with strong characters, and I like stories where there's closure at the end. And I like stories where there's hope. That's a kind of empowerment. I think romance novels are very empowering, and I think suspense novels are, too.
If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.
Certainly, light fiction exists and encompasses mysteries or second-class romance novels, books that are read on the beach, whose only aim is to entertain. These books are not concerned with style or creativity - instead they are successful because they are repetitive and follow a template that readers enjoy.
If you tell me, I will leave you alone," I said. "And if you don't tell me, I am going to grab the nearest ghostwritten James Patterson romance novel and I am going to follow you through this store reading it out loud until you relent. Would you prefer me to read from Daphne's Three Tender Months with Harold or Cindy and John's House of Everlasting Love? I guarantee, your sanity and your indie street cred won't last a chapter. And they are very, very short chapters." Now I could see the fright beneath the defiance.
Romance novels are tales of brave women taming dangerous men. They are stories that capture the excitement of that most mysterious of relationships, the one between a woman and a man. They are legends told to women by other women, and they are as powerful and as endlessly fascinating to women as the legends that lie at the heart of all the other genres.
My novels are in the literature section as opposed to the romance section of bookstores because they're not romance novels. If I tried to have them published as romances, they'd be rejected. I write dramatic fiction; a further sub-genre would classify them as love stories.
Romance novels are birthday cake and life is often peanut butter and jelly. I think everyone should have lots of delicious romance novels lying around for those times when the peanut butter of life gets stuck to the roof of your mouth.
Somehow, women's romance novels are not titled He Stopped When I Said "No". They are, though, titled Sweet Savage Love, in which the woman rejects the hand of her gentler lover who saves her from the rapist and marries the man who repeatedly and savagely rapes her. It is this "marry the rapist" theme that not only turned Sweet Savage Love into a best-seller but also into one of women's most enduring romance novels.
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
Love is rather impotent and pitiful: My father must have told me a million times how much he loved me, but that emotion - assuming it was even real - hardly had the strength to counter the many other acts of wrong he committed against me. Contrary to romance novels and the love-conquers-all mentality that even those of us who grow up in an era of divorce are - in response to some atavistic instinct - still raised to believe, love is always a product and a victim of circumstances. It is fragile and small.
"The Lucky One" is at its heart a romance novel, elevated however by Nicholas Sparks' persuasive storytelling. Readers don't read his books because they're true, but because they ought to be true.
Love is not breathlessness; It is not excitement; It is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being “in love”, which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.
I had a romance novel inside me, but I paid three sailors to beat it out if me with steel pipes.
I don't write the same book over and over - I think if I did that, I would stop writing. I couldn't write a series with the same character, and I couldn't write a romance novel over and over again that takes place at a different beach every year. That's not who I am.
Mircea must have heard us come in, but he continued what he was doing. He stood with his back to us, the candlelight on his bare skin causing his muscles to fall into sharp relief. He’d washed the river gunk out of his hair and now he threw it back, the water droplets shimmering in the light. The scene looked for all the world like a really good romance novel cover.
For readers worldwide, the attraction of romance novels seems to be that they provide hope, strength, and the assurance that happy endings are possible. Romance makes the promise that no matter how bleak things sometimes look, in the end everything will turn out right and true love will triumph -- and in an uncertain world, that's very comforting.
We think of the romance novel as a lesser form of literature, but I don't think that's true. Love is a very important aspect of human life and worth exploring.
He looked as if he'd stepped straight off the cover of one of those romance novels she ordered from Amazon.com so she didn't have to be embarassed by some supercilious male clerk in the bookstore.
When I have my students do erasures, I'm always amazed by the way their voice comes through, whether they're doing an erasure of a romance novel or an encyclopedia. Your sensibility will out.
Suddenly his expression turned to alarm. He sprinted toward us. For a moment I had an absurd vision of myself on the cover of one of Gran’s old romance novels, where the damsel wilts into the arms of one half-dressed beefy guy while another stands by,casting her longing looks. Oh, the horrible choices a girl must make! I wished I’d had a moment to clean up. I was still covered in dried river muck, twine, and grass, like I’d been tarred and feathered. Then Anubis pushed past me and gripped Walt’s shoulders. Well…that was unexpected.
A romance novel focuses exclusively on two people falling in love. It can't be about a woman caring for her aging mother or something like that. It can have that element, but it has to be primarily about the male-female relationship.
You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you. -Mr. Darcy
In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.
If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.
I keep waiting for the day in which everyone who loves Downton Abbey will realize they were actually watching a historical romance novel.