Quotes by Novelists - Page 4

Merle had the feeling that he almost kissed her, but then his lips only touched her hair briefly, and all she could think of was that she hadn't washed it for days. It was crazy, really. Here they were, all trapped in this accursed sphinx stronghold, and she was thinking about washing her hair! Was that what being in love did to you? And then, was it being in love that was responsible for the lump in her throat and the fluttering in her stomach?
Kai Meyer
The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin.
Honoré de Balzac
Everything is false, everything is possible, everything is doubtful.
Guy de Maupassant
The day my father came to claim me, my mother did not wish for me to go. ‘She is a girl,' she said, ‘and I do not think that she is yours. I had a thousand other men.' He tossed his spear at my feet and gave my mother the back of his hand across the face, so she began to weep. ‘Girl or boy, we fight our battles,' he said, ‘but the gods let us choose our weapons.' He pointed to the spear, then to my mother's tears, and I picked up the spear.
George R.R. Martin
... the love which Kahu received from Koro Apirana was the sort that dropped off the edge of the table, like breadcrumbs after everybody else has had a big meal.
Witi Ihimaera
I began composing the next poem, the one that was to be written next. Not the last poem of those I had read, but the poem written in the head of someone who may never have existed but who had certainly written another poem nonetheless, and just never had the chance to commit it to ink and the page.
Steve Erickson
There's no substitute for imagination, but creativity is only enhanced when forged with life experience.
John Ridley
So to the wretched writer I should like to say that there’s one body only whose request for your caresses is not vulgar, is not unchaste, untoward, or impolite: the body of your work itself; for you must remember that your attentions will not merely celebrate a beauty but create one; that yours is love that brings it own birth with it, just as Plato has declared, and that you should therefore give up the blue things of this world in favor of the words which say them
William H. Gass
This world is all a fleeting show For man's illusion given The smiles of joy the tears of woe Deceitful shine deceitful flow - There's nothing true but Heaven.
George Moore
This place has only three exits, sir: Madness, and Death.
René Daumal
Tyrion let the eunuch help him mount. "Lord Varys," he said from the saddle, "sometimes I feel as though you are the best friend I have in King's Landing and sometimes I feel you are my worst enemy." "How odd. I think quite the same of you.
George R.R. Martin
By trying to understand everything, everything makes me dream
Gustave Flaubert
I am a product of two worlds and each world has given me a reason to love, be kind and grow strong.
Shilpa Raj
Remember the good hours when the words are flowing well. And never mind the bad hours there is no life without them.
Herman Wouk
The color has faded out of the sky. It is grey, becoming darker as the world turns herself round a little more. The clouds are long and black and ragged, like the wings of stormbattered dragons.
Keri Hulme
The answers would come to her. No need to rush them. Ten years ago, but so well remember it was as if it had happened yesterday, she had suffered the repercussions brought on by thoughtless rushing. This time, she would wait. Not wait for him to act, like she had been doing these past months. She would wait to see how she would act.
Anne Cherian
I do not wish to be a coward like the father of mankind and throw the blame upon a woman.
Ouida
Daniel, I did not knowwhat I wanted when I was agirl. And then I was a fool in every sense of the word. And now that I am a woman grown, I know that I love you and I want this son of yours, and our children who will come. I have seen a woman break her heart for love: my Queen Mary. I have seen another break her soul to avoid it: my Princess Elizabeth. I don't want to be Mary or Elizabeth, I want to be me: Hannah Verde Carpenter.""And we shall live somewhere that we can follow our belifs without danger," he insisted."Yes," I said, "in the England that Elizabeth will make.
Philippa Gregory
…what your life means depends on how you tell the story.
Matthew Woodring Stover
History is not a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken, but rather, a glorious tale which I wish to be cast in.
Pietros Maneos
A Christmas gambol oft could cheerThe poor man's heart through half the year.
Walter Scott
We have at any rate one advantage over Time and Space. We think them whereas it is extremely doubtful whether they think us!
John Cowper Powys
He is romantic—romantic,” he repeated. “And that is very bad—very bad. . . . Very good, too,” he added. “But is he?” I queried.‘“Gewiss,” he said, and stood still holding up the candelabrum, but without looking at me. “Evident! What is it that by inward pain makes him know himself? What is it that for you and me makes him—exist?”‘At that moment it was difficult to believe in Jim’s existence—starting from a country parsonage, blurred by crowds of men as by clouds of dust, silenced by the clashing claims of life and death in a material world—but his imperishable reality came to me with a convincing, with an irresistible force! I saw it vividly, as though in our progress through the lofty silent rooms amongst fleeting gleams of light and the sudden revelations of human figures stealing with flickering flames within unfathomable and pellucid depths, we had approached nearer to absolute Truth, which, like Beauty itself, floats elusive, obscure, half submerged, in the silent still waters of mystery. “Perhaps he is,” I admitted with a slight laugh, whose unexpectedly loud reverberation made me lower my voice directly; “but I am sure you are.” With his head dropping on his breast and the light held high he began to walk again. “Well—I exist, too,” he said.
Joseph Conrad
Books may look like nothing more than words on a page, but they are actually an infinitely complex imaginotransference technology that translates odd, inky squiggles into pictures inside your head.
Jasper Fforde
The more I see of the representatives of the people, the more I admire my dogs.
Alphonse de Lamartine
It is not Atlas who carries the world on his shoulders, but woman; and sometimes she plays with it as with a ball.
Henryk Sienkiewicz
There are few reasons for telling the truth, but for lying the number is infinite.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Her son would be incomparably handsome, good and powerful. He would be the expected Messiah; it is fortunate for humanity that all mothers have this pathetic faith, without it mankind would not have the ever-renascent strength to go on living.
Émile Zola
Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! a message to us from... human souls we never saw... And yet these arouse us terrify us teach us comfort us open their hearts to us as brothers.
Charles Kingsley
Stories worked much the same way…A false note at the beginning was much more costly than one nearer the end because early errors were part of the foundation.
Richard Russo
There is silly are people. You must suffer, or cause others to suffer, before you will have respect of one kind or the other from them...I will not stand to be looked at by anybody, especially when the looking is done with wrong thinking.
Richard Llewellyn
The habit of reading is the only enjoyment in which there is no alloy it lasts when all other pleasures fade.
Anthony Trollope
Curiosity is the beginning of wisdom.
Françoise Sagan
It is fairly obvious that those who are in favour of the death penalty have more affinity with assassins than those who are not.
Rémy de Gourmont
It was at times like this that one of those waves of bestiality ran through the mine, the sudden lust of the male that came over a miner when he met one of these girls on all fours, with her rear in the air and her buttocks busting out of her breeches.
Émile Zola
A moment or an eternity—did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist.
Ayn Rand
Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it’s a mistake to make a habit of it.
W Somerset Maugham
And for a moment it seemed to me as if I also were buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets.
Joseph Conrad
I want to die, stripped, by myself, of all fantasies. That's the goal. I want to feel what is real, at the end, and only what is real. Grip fiercely with my eyes all that is around me--the people of my intimate life, the objects in the room, without the evasions of fantasies.
Frank Lentricchia
It's despair at the lack of (I'm cheating, I didn't say all these things - but I'm going to write what I want to say as well as what I did) feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world.
John Fowles
Justice is an affectation of perspective, not a universal value.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Lestat: I despise you! I ought to destroy you-finish what I started when I made you. Turn you into ashes and sift them through my hands. You know that I could do it! Like that! Like the snap of mortal fingers, I could do it. Burn you as I burnt your little house. And nothing could save you, nothing at all.
Anne Rice
Paris that eternal monstrous marvel … the city of a hundred-thousand novels … a living creature, the great courtesan whose face and heart and mind-boggling morals they know: “They” are the lovers of Paris.
Honoré de Balzac
A novel takes the courage of a marathon runner, and as long as you have to run, you might as well be a winning marathon runner. Serendipity and blind faith faith in yourself won't hurt a thing. All the bastards in the world will snicker and sneer because they haven't the talent to zip up their flies by themselves. To hell with them, particularly the critics. Stand in there, son, no matter how badly you are battered and hurt.
Leon Uris
For this wire is as a part of our body, as a vein torn from us, glowing with our blood. Are we proud of this thread of metal, or of our hands which made it, or is there a line to divide these two?
Ayn Rand
I hope the artist who illustrates this work will take care to do justice to his portrait. Mr. Clive himself, let that painter be assured, will not be too well pleased if his countenance and figure do not receive proper attention.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.
Langston Hughes
When truth is replaced by silence,the silence is a lie.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
They laughed at him, but they didn't know, they didn't know about all the nice things he had. No one knew. No one. Only someday he'd see somebody different, somebody to give his things to, somebody who would give him all their things. Yes. He'd like that. He'd know her when he saw her. He'd know just what to say.
George R.R. Martin
Dear friend, I have searched all nightthrough each burnt paper,but I fear I will never findthe formula to let you die
Leonard Cohen
Sometimes it is best for men not to attempt to interfere with destiny. Our prayers can be answered in ways which we do not expect and do not welcome.
Wilbur Smith
The path to Salvation is as narrow and as difficult to walk as a razor's edge.
W Somerset Maugham
Everybody talks about freedom, citizens," the big man said gently, seeming to draw upon that very sure source of personal knowledge again, "but they dont really want it. Half of them wants it but the other half dont. What they really want is to maintain an illusion of freedom in front of their wives and business associates. Its a satisfactory compromise, and as long they can have that they can get along without the other which is more expensive. The only trouble is, every man who declares himself free to his friends has to make a slave out of his wife and employees to keep up the illusion and prove it; the wife to be free in front of her bridgeclub has to command her Help, Husband and Heirs. It resolves itself into a battle; whoever wins, the other one loses. For every general in this world there have to be 6,000 privates.
James Jones
Human nature is the same in all professions.
Laurence Sterne
As Garp put it, 'You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.' Even if these so-called endings and beginnings are illusions.
John Irving
Hard writing makes easy reading.
Wallace Stegner
The noontide of my life is starting,Which I must needs accept, I know;But oh, my light youth, if we're parting,I want you as a friend to go!My thanks to you for the enjoyments,The sadness and the pleasant torments,The hubbub, storms, festivity,For all that you have given me;My thanks to you. I have delightedIn you when times were turbulent,When times were calm... to full extent;Enough now! With a soul clear-sightedI set out on another questAnd from my old life take a rest.Let me glance back. Farewell, you arboursWhere, in the backwoods, I recallDays filled with indolence and ardoursAnd dreaming of a pensive soul.And you, my youthful inspiration,Keep stirring my imagination,My heart's inertia vivify,More often to my corner fly.Let not a poet's soul be frozen,Made rough and hard, reduced to boneAnd finally be turned to stoneIn that benumbing world he goes in,In that intoxicating sloughWhere, friends, we bathe together now.
Alexander Pushkin
What do you mean, 'Angle of Repose?' she asked me when I dreamed we were talking about Grandmother's life, and I said it was the angle at which a man or woman finally lies down. I suppose it is; and yet ... I thought when I began, and still think, that there was another angle in all those years when she was growing old and older and very old, and Grandfather was matching her year for year, a separate line that did not intersect with hers. They were vertical people, they lived by pride, and it is only by the ocular illusion of perspective that they can be said to have met. But he had not been dead two months when she lay down and died too, and that may indicate that at that absolute vanishing point they did intersect. They had intersected for years, for more than he especially would ever admit.
Wallace Stegner
Small towns may revile you, but they have to keep you-they can't turn you away.
John Irving
When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child, then he will return, and not before.
George R.R. Martin