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Quotes by Novelist
"A motion picture, or music, or television, they have to maintain a certain decorum in order to be broadcast to a vast audience. Other forms of mass media cost too much to produce a risk reaching only a limited audience. Only one person. But a book. . . . A book is cheap to print and bind. A book is as private and consensual as sex. A book takes time and effort to consume - something that gives a reader every chance to walk away. Actually, so few people make the effort to read that it's difficult to call books a "mass medium." No one really gives a damn about books. No one has bothered to ban a book in decades."
50
"The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book."
Mind,
50
"Maybe you had to come close to losing something before you could remember its value."
50
"I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe."
50
"The monkish vows keep us far from that sink of vice that is the female body, but often they bring us close to other errors. Can I finally hide from myself the fact that even today my old age is still stirred by the noonday demon when my eyes, in choir, happen to linger on the beardless face of a novice, pure and fresh as a maiden's?"
50
"Just in case you get any ideas, know that I'll be sleeping with a can of Mace in one hand and pepper spray in the other. - KatieJorlan's expression turned mocking. "Just in case you get any ideas, know that I'll be sleeping with a feather in one hand and massage oil in the other."
50
"Mysteries of attraction could not always be explained through logic. Sometimes the fractures in two separate souls became the very hinges that held them together."
50
"Leo had seen Tia Callida in action; she liked knives, snakes and putting babies in roaring fires. Yeah, definitely let's unleash her rage. Great idea."
50
"We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation."
50
"Float beyond the world of trees. Out into the whispering breeze, past the rushes, past the weeds, past the marsh's waving reeds."
50
"I act delighted, but I have zero interest in these Capitol people. They are only distractions from the food."
50
"I have brought you a hero's fate, and a hero's fate is never happy. It is never anything but tragic."
50
"Mr Jenkins. Unique, as every star in the sky is unique, every leaf on every tree, every snowflake, every farandola, every cherubim, unique: Named."
50
"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep."
50
"Life and people are complex. A writer as an artist doesn't have the personality of a politician. We don't see the world that simply."
50
"Last night I watched the weather channel, as is my habit. Elsewhere in the world there are floods: roiling brown water, bloated cows floating by, survivors huddled on rooftops. Thousands have drowned. Global warming is held accountable: People must stop burning things up, it is said. Gasoline, oil, whole forests. But they won't stop. Greed and hunger lash them on, as usual."
50
"Back off, asshole. I haven't had a woman today, so I'm in no mood for this kind of bullshit."
50
"Roads go ever ever onUnder cloud and under starYet feet that wandering have goneTurn at last to home afar.Eyes that fire and sword have seenAnd horror in the halls of stoneLook at last on meadows greenAnd trees and hills they long have known."
50
"Now we come to forgiveness. Don't worry about forgiving me right now. There are more important things. For instance: keep the others safe, if they are safe. Don't let them suffer too much. If they have to die, let it be fast. You might even provide a Heaven for them. We need You for that. Hell we can make for ourselves."
50
"It is a very strange sensation to inexperience youth to feel itself quite alone the world, cut adrift from every connection, uncertain whether the port to which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by many impediments from returning to that it has quitted. The charm of adventure sweetens that sensation, the glow of pride warms it; but then the throb of fear disturbs it; and fear with me became predominant when half an hour elapsed, and still I was alone."
50
"What is the cause of historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the sum total of wills transferred to one person. On what condition are the willso fo the masses transferred to one person? On condition that the person express the will of the whole people. That is, power is power. That is, power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand."
50
"Mother used to say escape is never further than the nearest book."
50
"When I sit at my table to write, I never know what it's going to be until I'm under way. I trust in inspiration, which sometimes comes and sometimes doesn't. But I don't sit back waiting for it. I work every day."
50
"Fancy your having no sunshine in London yesterday! Here it was glorious, like full summer, and I sat up with the window wide open, listening to the discourse of two amorous thrushes."
49
"Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness."
49
"Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists."
49
"What delights us in visible beauty is the invisible."
49
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