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Quotes by Novelist
"The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy."
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"The comic is the perception of the opposite; humor is the feeling of it."
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"You could put your faith in technology. It got you here, it can get you out' - Murray (WN 285)."
35
"Past tears are present strength."
35
"The Hopi Indians thought that the world's religions each contained one spiritual thread, and that these threads are always seeking each other, wanting to join. When all the threads are finally woven together they will form a rope that will pull us out of this dark cycle of history and into the next realm."
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"Use your imagination, and you'll see that even the most narrow, humdrum lives are infinite in scope if you examine them with enough care."
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"So, when on one side you hoist in Locke's head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant's and you come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunder-heads overboard, and then you will float light and right."
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"Ashryver eyes.The fairest eyes, from legends oldof brightest, ringed with gold."
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"Mr. Asher, you can resist who you are for only so long. Finally, you just decide to go with fate."
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"I was thinking that we all learn by experience, but some of us have to go to summer school."
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"He did not care for the lying at first. He hated it. Then later he had come to like it. It was part of being an insider but it was a very corrupting business."
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"There is no such thing as a good call at 7 AM. It's been my experience that all calls between the hours of 11 PM and 9 AM are disaster calls."
35
"Indeed this gentleman's stoicism was of that not uncommon kind, which enables a man to bear with exemplary fortitude the afflictions of his friends, but renders him, by way of counterpoise, rather selfish and sensitive in respect of any that happen to befall himself."
35
"I love you with everything I am, everything I've been, and everything I hope to be. I love you with my past, and I love you for my future. I love you for the children we'll have and for the years we'll have together. I love you for every one of my smiles and even more, for every one of your smiles."
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"Granted, there is always much that is hidden, and we must not forget that the writing of history - however dryly it is done and however sincere the desire for objectivity - remains literature. History's third dimension is always fiction."
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"Old Barley might be as old as thee hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in Chinks's Basin to fill it to overflowing."
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"Then the Warrior realizes that these repeated experiences have but one aim: to teach him what he does not want to learn."
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"I don't look at emails, Internet or newspapers before 1 P.M. I wake at 7 A.M., eat fruit, drink tea or coffee, and read what I've achieved, or not achieved, the previous day. Then I take a shower and work on my next sentence until 1 P.M. After I've done emails and so on, I write again from 3 P.M. until 8 P.M.; then I socialise."
35
"Marvellous!" he repeated, looking up at me. "Look! The beauty--but that is nothing--look at the accuracy, the harmony. And so fragile! And so strong! And so exact! This is Nature--the balance of colossal forces. Every star is so--and every blade of grass stands so--and the mighty Kosmos il perfect equilibrium produces--this. This wonder; this masterpiece of Nature--the great artist."
35
"Maybe this isn't the right thing to say, but I want you to know: When you ran for the stage, I've never been so proud of you in all my life. You've always been beautiful; you've always been talented. And now I know that your moral compass is perfectly aligned, that you see clearly when things are wrong, and you do everything you can to stop it. As a father, I can't ask for more. I love you America. And I'm so so proud."
35
"Galinda didn't often stop to consider whether she believed in what she said or not, the whole point of conversations was flow."
35
"The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people."
35
"The things they say!A truck driver would blush.I would never talk that wayto Trevor he walks on water.I want him to think I do too.For a while, he did, or at leasthe pretended to.I did things with TrevorI wouldn't dare to confessto anyone-things I didn'tknow anyone did.But he wanted me to,so I did. That's what you dowhen you love someone,right?"
35
"Take off that coat,' he told him.'Sir?''You heard me.'The boy slipped out of his jacket, whining, 'What you gonna do? What I'm gonna wear?'The man untied the baby from her chest and wrapped it in the boy's coat, knotting the sleeves in front.'What I'm gonna wear?'The old man sighed and, after a pause, said, 'You want it back then go head and take it off that baby. Put the baby naked in the grass and put your coat back on. And if you can do it, then go on 'way somewhere and don't come back."
35
"I get it, even if Jamie can't put it into words. There are some books you can never get rid of, even if you don't like the ending."
35
"Despite the loss they were suffering, they'd both relaxed - as people do when they realize they've run out of chances for happiness."
35
"But after all we are not children, not illiterate juvenile delinquents, not English public school boys who after a night of homosexual romps have to endure the paradox of reading the Ancients in expurgated versions."
35
"I do understand that they fall when I'm least able to pay attention because poems fall not from a tree, really, but from the richly pollinated boughs of an ordinary life, buzzing, as lives do, with clamor and glory. They are easy to miss but everywhere: poetry just is, whether we revere it or try to put it in prison. It is elementary grace, communicated from one soul to another."
35
"You have to expect the raps when you have achieved popularity as a writer."
35
"Thanks to words we have been able to rise above the brutes and thanks to words we have often sunk to the level of the demons."
35
"I spent most of my youth hauling sides of beef and pork to my father's shop. Carrying you is far more enjoyable.""How sweet," Annabelle mumbled sickly, her eyes closed. "Every woman dreams of being told that she's preferable to a dead cow."
35
"What are you working on?' Elizabeth asked. Nate could hear her tapping a pencil on her desk. She took notes during their conversations. He didn't know what she did with the notes, but it bothered him.'I have a lecture at the sanctuary in four days.' Why, why had he told her? Why? Now she'd rattle down the mountain in her ancient Mercedes that looked like a Nazi staff car, sit in the audience, and ask all the questions that she knew in advance he couldn't answer."
35
"We are snared into doing things for which we get called names, and things for which we get hanged, and yet the spirit may well survive - survive the condemnations, survive the halter, by Jove! And there are things - they look small enough sometimes too - by which some of us are totally and completely undone."
35
"We read each other through our eyes, and anatomically they are an extension of our brains. When we catch someone's eye, we look into a mind."
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"No one would argue that we owe a debt of gratitude to the Goliath Corporation. They helped us to rebuild after the Second War and it should not be forgotten. Of late, however, it seems as though the Goliath Corporation is falling far short of its promises of fairness and altruism. We are finding ourselves now in the unfortunate position of continuing to pay back a debt that has long since been paid--with interest..."
35
"Faye, if you got eaten by another shark, would you please at least have the decency to say so? My time is kind of limited, if you know what I'm sayin'."
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"It's not a nice thing to send a penis to a woman. It's disrespectful."
35
"I have watched them all day and they are the same men that we are. I believe that I could walk up to the mill and knock on the door and I would be welcome except that they have orders to challenge all travelers and ask to see their papers. It is only orders that come between us. Those men are not fascists. I call them so, but they are not. They are poor men as we are. They should never be fighting against us and I do not like to think of the killing."
35
"Time: Change experienced and observed. Time measured by the angle of the turning earth as it rotates through its axis. The earth turning slowly on its spit under the fire of the sun."
35
"Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt kept an evening school in the village; that is to say, she was a ridiculous old woman of limited means and unlimited infirmity, who used to go to sleep from six to seven every evening, in the society of youth who paid two pence per week each, for the improving opportunity of seeing her do it."
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