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Quotes by Novelist
"A writer has no use for the clock. A writer lives in an infinity of days, time without end, ploughed under."
35
"To be strong, and beautiful, and go round making music all the time. Yes, she could do that, and with a very earnest prayer Polly asked for the strength of an upright soul, the beauty of a tender heart, the power to make her life a sweet and stirring song, helpful while it lasted, remembered when it died."
35
"In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful."
35
"Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country."
35
"It's not about outward appearances but inward significance. A grandeur in the world, but not of the world, a grandeur that the world doesn't understand. That first glimpse of pure otherness, in whose presence you bloom out and out and out.A self one does not want. A heart one cannot help."
35
"Nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something."
35
"He did touch people's lives, the lives of strangers, in an entirely unanticipated way. It was they who really mourned him - or what they thought was him - with a grief that was no less sharp for not being intimate with its object."
35
"He is not admiring the colours of the earth and sky, the marks of the wind on the sea, the gilded clouds of twilight; they are the objects of his meditation."
35
"It was an instinctive testimony to Little Dorrit's worth and difference from all the rest, that the poor young fellow honoured and loved her for being simply what she was."
35
"Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made."
35
"Home, I think. But it's nowhere I can go back to."
35
"The greatest happiness is when the eye discovers beauty where neither then mind conceived of nor the hand intended any."
35
"Never for one minute have I taken you for reality . . . You are a lie, you are my illness, you are a phantom . . . You are my hallucination. You are the incarnation of myself . . . of my thoughts and feelings, but only the nastiest and stupidest of them."
35
"An acquaintance had become a lover, might become a husband, but would retain all that she had noted in the acquaintance; and love must confirm an old relation rather than reveal a new one."
35
"Did you see Grace is back with us?'Megan did see me. She saw me jump off a cliff and crawl under an Iranian fence. Megan has seen plenty. And I can't help but hold my breath, waiting on her answer.'Hi,' Megan says, turning to me. 'Welcome home.'Home. The word hits me. I've spent all my life thinking that I didn't have one, but now that I'm back I can't deny that I've spent more my life on Embassy Row than in any other place-that maybe it just wasn't my mother's childhood home. In a way, it's mine, too."
35
"It may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated, that its loss is part of our common humanity."
35
"We are as liable to be corrupted by books, as by companions."
35
"If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.The Brothers KaramazovMitya (Dmitri) to Aloysha who visits him in prison, Book XI - Ivan, Chapter 4 - A Hymn and a Secret."
35
"I want you all to stand; will you do that for me, please?"
35
"Sex is a three letter word even the worst speller in the world can spell."
35
"I am touched that you are trying to comprehend me. A friend could not be more loving."
35
"Oh, sweetie, I'm sorry, you can't have a baby brother, because that would mean that Daddy had sex, and that's never going to happen again."
35
"It's a terrible thing, what we did, said Francis abruptly. "I mean, this man was not Voltaire we killed. But still. It's a shame. I feel bad about it."
35
"And her laugh was enough to make you want to kick over what you were doing and follow her down the street."
35
"I like simple men and complicated women."
35
"The box had done what Sweet Home had not, what working like an ass and living like a dog had not: drove him crazy so he would not lose his mind."
35
"I would have told them that he lived a life lacking in purpose or direction. Like those aimless rides I took him on. A life lived from the backseat, observed as it blurred by. An indifferent life."
35
"If you know from whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations on where you can go."
35
"One of Coin's men lays a hand on my arm. Its not an aggressive move, really, but after the arena's I react defensively to any unfamiliar touch. I jerk my arm free and take off running down the halls. My mind does a quick inventory of my odd little hiding places and i wind up in the supply closet, curled up against a crate of chalk."
34
"That summer, in any case, all the fears with which I had grown up, and which were now a part of me and controlled my vision of the world, rose up like a wall between the world and me, and drove me into the church."
34
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