top of page
.png){kind=small}
Quotes by Novelist
"Writing Part of the Scenery has been a very different experience. I have been reminded of people and events, real and imaginary which have been part of my life. This book is a celebration of the land which means so much to me."
6
"When I write, I enjoy myself so much that what is being written really needs no reader."
6
"After having been standing by the gate of the garden for a long time, Siddhartha realised that his desire was foolish, which had made him go up to this place, that he could not help his son, that he was not allowed to cling him. Deeply, he felt the love for the run-away in his heart, like a wound, and he felt at the same time that this wound had not been given to him in order to turn the knife in it, that it had to become a blossom and had to shine."
6
"Three or four times only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, depressions, cold fronts, ill winds, and contrary tides... I mistook them for adulthood. Assuming they were a fixed feature in my life's voyage, I neglected to record their latitude, their longitude, their approach. Young ruddy fool. What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds."
6
"Hey. I just wanted to make sure you got home," I say. "Katniss, I live three houses away from you," he says."
6
"Writing is finally play, and there's no reason why you should get paid for playing."
6
"We need hope, or else we cannot endure."
6
"In our world, I rank music somewhere between hair ribbons and rainbows in terms of usefulness."
6
"There was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth."
6
"Cynicism can blind one to subtler virtues."
6
"In a forest of a hundred thousand trees, no two leaves are alike. And no two journeys along the same path are alike."
6
"At some point, you really just have to finish your work and release it as is-if only so you can go on and make other things with a glad and determined heart."
6
"I put it to the great man [Hitchcock], the key to fictitious terror is partition or containment: so long as the Bates Motel is sealed off from our world, we want to peer in, like at a scorpion enclosure. But a film that shows the world is a Bates Motel, well, that's... the stuff of Buchloe, dystopia, depression. We'll dip our toes in a predatory, amoral, godless unive3rse, but only our toes."
6
"Lying's wrong, but when the world spins backwards, a small wrong may be a big right."
6
"Patience's design flaw became obvious for the first time in my life: the outcome is decided not during the course of play but when the cards are shuffled, before the game even begins. How pointless is that?"
6
"Imagination which comes into play in falling in love is different from any other. Certainly in my case, and I've fallen in love all my life, one imagines the person to be as you want them to be. They frequently turn out to be someone different, for better or worse."
6
"I have in this War a burning private grudge-which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler (for the odd thing about demonic inspiration and impetus is that it in no way enhances the purely intellectual stature: it chiefly affects the mere will). Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light."
6
"Spent the fortnight gone in the music room reworking my year's fragments into a 'sextet for overlapping soloists': piano, clarinet, 'cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale, and color. In the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor; in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan't know until it's finished, and by then it'll be too late."
6
"There is no French town in which the wounds inflicted on the battle-field are not bleeding."
6
"I think a servant of the enemy would look fairer and feel fouler."
6
"If you want to control someone, all you have to do is to make them feel afraid."
6
"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."
6
"You're Dionysus," I said. "The god of wine."Mr. D rolled his eyes. "What do they say these days, Grover? Do the children say 'Well duh!'?"Y-yes, Mr. D."Then, well, duh! Percy Jackson. Did you think I was Aphrodite, perhaps?" You're a god."Yes, child."A god. You."
6
"Orange?" He seems unconvinced."Not bright orange. But soft. Like the sunset," I say. "At least, that's what you told me once."
6
"Taking something from one man and making it worse is plagiarism."
6
"Truth of a modest sort I can promise you, and also sincerity. That complete, praiseworthy sincerity which, while it delivers one into the hands of one's enemies, is as likely as not to embroil one with one's friends."
6
"Of all the Hathaway sisters, Cam said equably, "Beatrix is the one most suited to choose her own husband. I trust her judgment.Beatrix gave him a brilliant smile. "Thank you, Cam."What are you thinking? Leo demanded of his brother-in-law. "You can't trust Beatrix's judgment."Why not?"She's too young, Leo said."I'm twenty-three, Beatrix protested. "In dog years I'd be dead."
6
"To the everlasting credit of the people of District 12, not one person claps. Not even the ones holding betting slips, the ones who are usually beyond caring. Possibly because they know me from the Hob, or knew my father, or have encountered Prim, who no one could help loving. So instead of acknowledging applause, I stand there unmoving while they take part in the boldest form of dissent they can manage. Silence. Which says we do not agree. We do not condone. All of this is wrong."
6
"It sounds trite, but only because words make everything true sound trite. Because words always screw up what you're trying to say."
6
"We walked to meet each other up at the time of our love and then we have been irresistibly drifting in different directions, and there's no altering that."
6
bottom of page