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Quotes by Novelist
"I am so miserable, there are so many questions, I can see no way out and am so wretched and feeble that I could lie forever on the sofa and keep opening and closing my eyes without knowing the difference."
46
"When I walked to school in the mornings I would start out alone but would pick up four other boys along the way. We would set out together after school across the village green."
46
"It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet."
46
"She can be a whirlwind of tits and terror when she puts her mind to a purpose, can't she, sir?"
46
"I was not a good scholar, and during my last year at school I made little effort. This was not due to laziness, but to a state of youthful day-dreaming and indifference that was only pierced when creative desire enveloped me like ether."
46
"The pale organisms of literary heroes feeding under the author's supervision swell gradually with the reader's lifeblood; so that the genius of a writer consists in giving them the faculty to adapt themselves to that - not very appetizing - food and thrive on it, sometimes for centuries."
46
"I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day."
46
"Thinking I'm a moron gives people something to feel smug about," Charles Wallace said. "Why should I disillusion them?"
46
"It may be that we have lost our ability to hold a blazing coal, to move unfettered through time, to walk on water, because we have been taught that such things have to be earned; we should deserve them; we must be qualified. We are suspicious of grace. We are afraid of the very lavishness of the gift. But a child rejoices in presents!"
46
"Perhaps this is what the stories meant when they called somebody heartsick. Your heart and your stomach and your whole insides felt empty and hollow and aching."
46
"For long minutes, we stood there. Until I said, "Let's go find somewhere to eat " outside. "Hmmm. He showed no sign of letting go. I looked up at last. Found his eyes shining with that familiar, wicked light. "I think I'm hungry for something else, he purred. My toes curled in my boots, but I lifted my brows and said cooly, "Oh? Rhys nipped at my earlobe, then whispered in my ear as he winnowed us up to our bedroom, where two plates of food now waited on the desk. "I owe you for last night, mate. He gave me the courtesy, at least, of letting me pick what he consumed first; me or the food. I picked wisely."
46
"I recalled my father-in-law's aphorism "To fool a judge, feign fascination, but to bamboozle the whole court, feign boredom..." & I pretended to extract a speck from my eye."
46
"The best plans are always the simplest."
46
"All interpretation or observation of reality is necessarily fiction. In this case, the problem is that man is a moral animal abandoned in an amoral universe and condemned to a finite existence with no other purpose than to perpetuate the natural cycle of the species. It is impossible to survive in a prolonged state of reality, at least for a human being. We spend a good part of our lives dreaming, especially when we're awake. As I said, pure biology."
46
"Always imitate the behavior of the winners when you lose."
46
"It must be remembered that in those great days I was considered to be an "integrationist" - this was never, quite, my own idea of myself - and Malcolm was considered to be a "racist in reverse." This formulation, in terms of power - and power is the arena in which racism is acted out - means absolutely nothing: it may even be described as a cowardly formulation. The powerless, by definition, can never be "racists," for they can never make the world pay for what they feel or fear except by the suicidal endeavor which makes them fanatics or revolutionaries, or both."
46
"I'll tend to her as no mother ever tended a child, a daughter. Nobody will ever get my milk no more except my own children. I never had to give it to nobody else--and the one time I did it was took from me--they held me down and took it. Milk that belonged to my baby.... I know what it is to be without the milk that belongs to you; to have to fight and holler for it, and to have so little left."
46
"Literature, art, like civilization itself, are only accidents."
46
"A good novel is worth more then the best scientific study."
46
"You talk as if a god had made the Machine," cried the other. "I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is much, but not everything."
46
"The best preparation for the future is the present well seen to, and the last duty done."
46
"I don't much believe in the idea of characters. I write with words, that is all. Whether those words are put in the mouth of this or that character does not matter to me."
46
"It's difficult to talk to people... I walk into a room and I'm Danielle Steel, and whatever I say is going to be taken apart."
46
"I entirely agree with you about the obscurity of Mrs Browning's line about the stars. It is far-fetched. She wanted to express something which she found beyond expression."
46
"Events that are predestined require but little management. They manage themselves. They slip into place while we sleep, and suddenly we are aware that the thing we fear to attempt, is already accomplished."
46
"The day, like the previous days, dragged sluggishly by in a kind of insipid idleness, devoid even of that dreamy expectancy which can make idleness so enchanting."
46
"Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine."
46
"Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth."
46
"Dating is like trying to make a meal out of leftovers. Some leftovers actually get better when they've had a little time to mature. But others should be thrown out right away, No matter how you try to warm them up, they're never as good as when they were new."
46
"Dr. John, throughout his whole life, was a man of luck - a man of success. And why? Because he had the eye to see his opportunity, the heart to prompt to well-timed action, the nerve to consummate a perfect work. And no tyrant-passion dragged him back; no enthusiasms, no foibles encumbered his way."
46
"It was all extremely symbolic; but then, if you choose to think so, nothing in this world is not symbolical."
46
"Being a screenwriter is not enough for a full creative life."
46
"There ain't nothing from the outside that can lick any of us."
46
"People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching."
46
"Just how common do such savageries have to be for a decent person to be unable to overlook them? If you knew that one in one thousand food animals suffered actions like those described above, would you continue to eat animals? One in one hundred? One in ten?"
46
"If life's lessons could be reduced to single sentences, there would be no need for fiction."
46
"It sounds trite, but only because words make everything true sound trite. Because words always screw up what you're trying to say."
46
"Beauty is boring because it is predictable."
46
"I always rewrite the very beginning of a novel. I rewrite the beginning as I write the ending, so I may spend part of morning writing the ending, the last 100 pages approximately, and then part of the morning revising the beginning. So the style of the novel has a consistency."
46
"Perhaps in the back of our minds we already understand, without all the science I've discussed, that something terribly wrong is happening. Our sustenance now comes from misery. We know that if someone offers to show us a film on how our meat is produced, it will be a horror film. We perhaps know more than we care to admit, keeping it down in the dark places of our memory-- disavowed. When we eat factory-farmed meat we live, literally, on tortured flesh. Increasingly, that tortured flesh is becoming our own."
46
"I come from a family of great readers and storytellers."
46
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