Quotes by Novelists - Page 69

Sweet Goddess! she thought suddenly. I have never even spoken to him. I know nothing about the man, nothing at all.What if he tries to get me into some sordid little room and force himself on me, like an animal? How will I fight him off? All alone, not able to cry for help?No, it will not be like that, it could not be. I would have known if he were that kind of man, and felt repelled. He could not sing and write such beautiful verses, and look so fine if he were not the man I want him to be. Yes, when we meet, it will be as it is in his songs. He will obey, do exactly what I tell him and no more. Oh, I have hoped so long for this. Goddess of Love, let it be beautiful.
Robert Shea
I believe that nothing happens by chance. Deep down, things have their secret plan, even though we don't understand it.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
All things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.
Elias Canetti
Probably one or two moments in your whole life you will hear a dark whispering spirit, a voice coming from the center of things. It will have blades for lips and will not stop until it speaks the one secret thing at the heart of it all. Kneeling on the floor, unable to stop shuddering, I heard it plainly. It said, You are unlovable...
Sue Monk Kidd
A sweet fruit for a sweet fight.
George R.R. Martin
For those who like that sort of thing," said Miss Brodie in her best Edinburgh voice, "That is the sort of thing they like.
Muriel Spark
Lestat: You're very anxious to be out of these rooms, aren't you? Why don't we simply get into bed together? I don't understand.David: You're serious?Lestat: Of courseDavid: You do realize, that this is an absolutely magnificent body, don't you? I mean you aren't insensible to the fact that you've been deposited in a...a most impressive piece of young male flesh.Lestat: I looked it over well before the switch, remember? Why is it you don't want to..David: You've been with a woman, haven't you?Lestat: I wish you hadn't read my mind. It's rude. Besides, what does that matter to you?David: A woman you loved.Lestat: I have always loved both men and women.David: That's a slightly different use of the word 'love.
Anne Rice
They were our enemies. Yet in those young men of Italy I'd seen something centuries old. An American is only as old as his years. A long line of something was hidden behind the bright eyes of those Italians. And then and there I decided to learn something of the modern world. There was something abroad which we Americans couldn't or wouldn't understand. But unless we made some attempt to realize that everyone in the world isn't American, and that not everything American is good, we'll all perish together, and in this twentieth century....
John Horne Burns
A good piece of fiction, in my view, does not offer solutions. Good stories deal with our moral struggles, our uncertainties, our dreams, our blunders, our contradictions, our endless quest for understanding. Good stories do not resolve the mysteries of the human spirit but rather describe and expand up on those mysteries.
Tim O'Brien
And even if you hate her, can't stand her, even if she's ruining your life, there's something about her, some romance, some power. She's absolutely herself. No matter how hard you try, you'll never get to her. And when she dies, the world will be flat, too simple, reasonable, fair.
Mona Simpson
I go dreaming into the future, where I see nothing, nothing. I have no plans, no idea, no project, and, what is worse, no ambition. Something – the eternal ‘what’s the use?’ – sets its bronze barrier across every avenue that I open up in the realm of hypothesis.
Gustave Flaubert
Life is short..Live to the fullest..
John Grisham
You have corrupted my imagination and inflamed my blood...
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
We shall never fully understand nature (or ourselves), and certainly never respect it, until we dissociate the wild from the notion of usability - however innocent and harmless the use. For it is the general uselessness of so much of nature that lies at the root of our ancient hostility and indifference to it.
John Fowles
Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana
I only need half my wits to be a match for you.
George R.R. Martin
Ah, grief makes us precise!
Leonard Cohen
Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you have not committed.
Anthony Powell
It's fun telling you tall Texas tales. You always look like a little girl who's hearing Cinderella for the first time.
Edna Ferber
It may upset my secret sisters that I say this, but between you and me, if you're so fortunate as to have captured the perfect male, peeling off that chain-mail bikini and becoming a part-time Amazon is not so bad after all.-Author's Note, Anne Fortier
Anne Fortier
The secret to success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.
Benjamin Disraeli
I am a lonely man," he said again that evening. "And is it not possible that you are also a lonely person? But I am an older man, and I can live with my loneliness, quietly. You are young, and it must be difficult to accept your loneliness. You must sometimes want to fight it.""But I am not at all lonely.""Youth is the loneliest time of all. Otherwise, why should you come so often to my house?"Sensei continued: "But surely, when you are with me, you cannot rid yourself of your loneliness. I have not it in me to help you forget it. You will have to look elsewhere for the consolation you seek. And soon, you will find that you no longer want to visit me."As he said this, Sensei smiled sadly.
Sōseki Natsume
Never subject to the rules, believing that the correct judgement and healthy nature keep her in the honesty she lived in.
Émile Zola
I still notice the burned house, mornings, when I walk along the beach. "Well, obviously I do not notice the house. What I notice is what remains of the house. One is still prone to think of a house as a house, however, even if there is not remarkably much left of it.
David Markson
All my moral and intellectual being is penetrated by an invincible conviction that whatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature and, however exceptional, cannot differ in its essence from all the other effects of the visible and tangible world of which we are a self-conscious part. The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries as it is—marvels and mysteries acting upon our emotions and intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it would almost justify the conception of life as an enchanted state. No, I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvelous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural which . . . is but a manufactured article, the fabrication of minds insensitive to the intimate delicacies of our relation to the dead and to the living, in their countless multitudes; a desecration of our tenderest memories; an outrage on our dignity.
Joseph Conrad
Why is it that people who cannot show feeling presume that that is a strength and not a weakness?
May Sarton
If in large part we were concerned only with making it through another day without getting laid off, there was a smaller part just hoping to leave for the night without contributing to someone’s lifetime of hurt.
Joshua Ferris
See, this is the way I see it. Not all anger is the same. Because there are different kids of anger. And you know what else - sometimes, anger is a virtue. As long as you're not making someone bleed.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
But why should you care what people will say? All you have to do is please yourself.
Ayn Rand
Every ideal comes from us as do all the amenities of life, in order to make our existence as simple reproducers, for which divine Providence solely intended us, less monotonous and less hard.
Guy de Maupassant
I'm tired of carrying around the weight of the world. I'm just going to lay it down now. It's my time to die, and it's your time to live. Don't mess it up.
Sue Monk Kidd
I hadn't been out to the hives before, so to start off she gave me a lesson in what she called 'bee yard etiquette'. She reminded me that the world was really one bee yard, and the same rules work fine in both places. Don't be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don't be an idiot; wear long sleeves and pants. Don't swat. Don't even think about swatting. If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates while whistling melts a bee's temper. Act like you know what you're doing, even if you don't. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved.
Sue Monk Kidd
Look forward to the wonderment of growing up, raising a family and driving by the gas station where the popular kids now work.
Tim Dorsey
I -- I alone know how to mourn for him as he deserves.' But while we were still shaking hands, such a look of awful desolation came upon her face that I perceived she was one of those creatures that are not the playthings of Time. For her he had died only yesterday. And, by Jove! the impression was so powerful that for me, too, he seemed to have died only yesterday -- nay, this very minute. I saw her and him in the same instant of time -- his death and her sorrow -- I saw her sorrow in the very moment of his death. Do you understand? I saw them together -- I heard them together.
Joseph Conrad
Stephan was secretive and a liar, but he was a very gentle and expert lover. She was the petted, cherished child, the desired mistress, the worshipped, perfumed goddess. She was all these things to Stephan - or so he made her believe.
Jean Rhys
One must count ones riches by the means one has to satisfy his desires.
Antoine François Prévost d'Exiles
As if one killed by calculation! A person kills only from an impulse that springs from his blood and sinews, from the vestiges of ancient struggles, from the need to live and the joy of being strong.
Émile Zola
Fear cuts deeper than swords.
George R.R. Martin
A cruel story runs on wheels and every hand oils the wheels as they run.
Ouida
The choices one makes, not one's blood, determine one's destiny - John Steinbeck
Laxmi Hariharan
Man is a moral animal abandoned in an amoral universe and condemned to a finite existence with no other prupose than to perpetuate the natural cycle of the species.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Ever since the Christmas of '53, I have felt that the yuletide is a special hell for those families who have suffered any loss or who must admit to any imperfection; the so-called spirit of giving can be as greedy as receiving--Christmas is our time to be aware of what we lack, of who's not home.
John Irving
Killing is no ordinary act,' said the vampire. 'One doesn't simply glut oneself on blood.' He shook his head. 'It is the experience of another's life for certain, and often the experience of the loss of that life through the blood, slowly. It is again and again the experience when I sucked the blood from Lestat's wrist and felt his heart pound with my heart. It is again and again a celebration of that experience; because for vampires that is the ultimate experience.
Anne Rice
Sooner or later, all men will do and know all things.
Richard Powers
Some writers enjoy writing, I am told. Not me. I enjoy having written.
George R.R. Martin
If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.
John Irving
Perish the universe, provided I have my revenge!
Cyrano de Bergerac
Sheriff, are you suggestin' the victom was kidnapped?""I'm only statin' that, at this time, we have no body, only nonvital body parts...
Steve Alten
An imperfect human heart, perfectly shattered, was her conclusion. A condition so common as to be virtually universal, rendering issues of right and wrong almost incidental.
Richard Russo
What the heart knows today the head will understand tomorrow.
James Stephens
Today you live, child. Tomorrow, you dream.
Lawrence Hill
She has passed information to you. Figures names and facts. You have learnt nothing very much. But you have a splendid memory. It will help you when you start to learn.
Richard Llewellyn
Only an atmosphere of quiet hard work and dull, serious conversation were appropriate to him.
Anthony Powell
I had a cup of tea, thought about my day and mostly about the horse whom, though I'd only known him a short time, I called my friend. I have few friends and am glad to have a horse for a friend. After the meal I smoked a cigarette and mused on the luxury it would be to go out, instead of talking to myself and boring myself to death with the same endless stories I'm forever telling myself. I am a very boring person, despite my enormous intelligence and distinguished appearance, and nobody knows this better than I. I've often told myself that if only I were given the opportunity, I'd perhaps become the centre of intellectual society. But by dint of talking to myself so much, I tend to repeat the same things all the time. But what can you expect? I'm a recluse.
Leonora Carrington
Oh, many a shaft at random sentFinds mark the archer little meant!And many a word at random spokenMay soothe, or wound, a heart that's broken!
Walter Scott
Nod house turned into shouthouse. In the shout house memorysaid shut up. It said silence,misery said amen, the mule'sheadmeant my stubborn lungs. . .I stoodimagining I fell back dreaming,stuck tongue stuck in my jawbrokemy jaw
Nathaniel Mackey
It was the dog Abel, who - as animals have been reported to do - had made his way over all England's hills and rivers, to return to that home where he was first kindly treated. The warm fire, by which he sleeps even now, and the fattening dish will be his rewards to the end of his days.
K.W. Jeter
...Is it an inspiring sight to see a man commit a heroic gesture, and then learn that he goes to vaudeville shows for relaxation? Or see a man who’s painted a magnificent canvas—and learn that he spends his time sleeping with every slut he meets?”“What do you want? Perfection?”“—or nothing. So, you see, I take the nothing.
Ayn Rand
So it’s democracy versus capitalism at this point, friends, and we out on this frontier outpost of the human world are perhaps better positioned than anyone else to see this and to fight this global battle, there’s empty land here, there’s scarce and nonrenewable resources here, and we’re going to get swept up into the fight and we cannot choose not to be part of it, we are one of the prizes and our fate will be decided by what happens throughout the human world. That being the case, we had better band together for the common good, for Mars and for us and for all the people on earth and for the seven generations, it’s going to be hard it’s going to take years, and the stronger we are the better our chances, which is why I’m so happy to see that burning meteor in the sky pumping the matrix of life into our world, and why I’m so happy to see you all here to celebrate it together, a representative congress of all that I love in this world, but look I think that steel-drum band is ready to play aren’t you” (shouts of assent) “so why don’t you folks start and we’ll dance till dawn and tomorrow scatter on the winds and down the sides of this great mountain, to carry the gift everywhere.
Kim Stanley Robinson
irony is for a traveler while traveling, happiness increases as the distance increases.
shivangi lavaniya