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Quotes by Novelist
"There is a marvelous peace in not publishing. It's peaceful. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy."
45
"She wanted to say, I am made of smoke. My mind is smoke, my thoughts are smoke, I am all smoke and only smoke. This body is a garment I put on, which by my magic art I have made capable of functioning as a human body functions, it's so biologically perfect that it can conceive children and pop them out in threes, fours and fives. Yet I am not of this body and could, if I chose, inhabit another woman, or an antelope, or a gnat. Aristotle was wrong, for I have lived for aeons, and altered by body when I chose, like a garment of which I had grown tired. The mind and the body are two, she wanted to say, but she knew it would disappoint him to be disagreed with, so she held her tongue."
45
"Whether we change our lives or do nothing, we have responded. To do nothing is to do something."
45
"Fear has many eyes and can see things underground."
45
"The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. once invented, it cannot be improved."
45
"I think people deceive themselves about themselves, particularly as they get older."
45
"In the first play, the crisis is Thomas More. In the second it's Anne Boleyn. In the third book, and the third play, it's crisis every day, an overlapping series of only just negotiable horrors. It's climbing and climbing. Then a sudden abrupt fall - within days."
45
"The present is the now the here through which all future plunges to the past."
45
"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."
45
"As we drove, I imagined we were standing still and the world was coming toward us."
45
"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?"
45
"I believe society has a right to defend itself, just as the individual has the right to attack that with which he disagrees."
45
"Just think! This whole world of ours is only a speck of mildew sprung up on a tiny planet, yet we think we can have something great - thoughts,, actions! They are all but grains of sand."
45
"What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses."
45
"He is not apprehended by reason, but by life."
45
"Your father, Jo. He never loses patience,--never doubts or complains,--but always hopes, and works and waits so cheerfully, that one is ashamed to do otherwise before him. He helped and comforted me, and showed me that I must try to practise all the virtues I would have my little girls possess, for I was their example. It was easier for your sakes than for my own; a startled or surprised look from one of you, when I spoke sharply, rebuked me more than any words could have done; and the love, respect, and confidence of my children was the sweetest reward I could receive for my efforts to be the woman I would have them copy."
45
"When we lay together, she showed me her soul, and I showed her mine, and they were the same. As you can imagine, mine was battered and bruised, tarnished like ancient metal. She scrubbed it clean. I cannot deny my own soul any more than I can deny she held it in her hands for a time."
45
"Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half."
45
"The great advantage of being in a rut is that when one is in a rut, one knows exactly where one is."
45
"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."
45
"How shall a man judge what to do in such times?''As he ever has judged,' said Aragorn. 'Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear...It is a man's part to discern them, as much in th Golden Wood as in his own house."
45
"He'd known, since the moment he figured out who she was, that while Celaena would always pick him, Aelin would not."
45
"What people say behind your back is your standing in the community."
45
"Ab figured that the chance of his recognising it would be about the same as a burglar recognising a dollar watch that happened to get caught for a minute on his vest button five years ago."
45
"From without no wonderful effect is wrought within ourselves unless some interior responding wonder meets it."
45
"Be in love with your life. Every minute of it."
45
"But then the subject turned to the spiritual life and Meg talked about her many visits to ashrams in India and her admiration for Swami Muktananda and Gurumayi. That got in the way, especially because he told her of his skepticism regarding the guru industry, and suggested she might profitably read Gita Mehta's book Karma Cola. "Why are you so cynical? she asked him, as if she genuinely wanted to know the answer, and he said that if you grew up in India it was easy to conclude that these people were fakes. "Yes, of course there are lots of charlatans, she said, reasonably, "but can't you discriminate? He shook his head sadly. "No, he said. "No, I can't. That was the end of their chat."
45
"Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale."
45
"A little bit of one story joins onto an idea from another, and hey presto, . . . not old tales but new ones. Nothing comes from nothing."
45
"Frankly, our ancestors don't seem much to brag about. I mean, look at the state they left us in, with the wars, the broken planet. Clearly, they didn't care about what would happen to the people who came after them."
45
"Ignorance is no reason with a fool for holding his tongue."
45
"To crooked eyes truth may wear a wry face."
45
"And the scary thing is, I'm on a fast track to that same aviary. Unless I find my wings."
45
"It is my job-no,-my privilege-to make the fire become an inferno."
45
"And on the endless dusty ribbon of the highway, on sunken roads vaulted over by branches, on paths between stands of grain that rose to his knees, the sun on his shoulders and the morning air in his nostrils, his heart full of the night's bliss, his spirit at peace and his flesh content, he would ride on his way ruminating his happiness, like someone who keeps savoring, hours later, the fragrance of the truffles he has eaten for dinner."
45
"There is no doubt that I have lots of words inside me; but at moments, like rush-hour traffic at the mouth of a tunnel, they jam."
45
"Incidentally, it's easy to write prescriptions, but difficult to come to an understanding with people."
45
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