top of page
.png){kind=small}
Quotes by Novelist
"When you give yourself, you receive more than you give."
42
"If I were a writer, how I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature. Lovely."
42
"Her body accepted my brutal seed and took it to swell within, just as the patient earth accepts a falling fruit into its tender soil to cradle and nourish it to grow. Came a time, just springtime last, our infant child pushed through the fragile barrier of her womb. Her legs branched out, just as the wood branches out from these eternal trees around us; but she was not hardy as they. My wife groaned with blood and ceased to breathe. Aye!, a scornful eve that bred the kind of pain only a god can withstand."
42
"Ironically, in today's marketplace successful nonfiction has to be unbelievable, while successful fiction must be believable."
42
"How come love sounds so violent? You fall head over heels. You're struck by Cupid's arrow. You take the risk of having your heart broken. From an outside perspective, it sounds impossibly painful, not worth the trouble. And yet we do it every day. We keep coming back for more. Why? If it weren't so perilous, maybe we wouldn't crave it so much. Maybe it has to be brutal, in order to work. People come in so many shapes and sizes that it takes a bit of force in order to fit together perfectly. But you know what they say about a break that heals: it's always stronger than before."
42
"It was that wisdom to us when it can no longer do any good."
42
"The quality of moral behavior varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved."
42
"A book had always been a door to another world... a world much more interesting and fantastical than reality. But she had finally discovered that life could be even more wonderful than fantasy.And that love could fill the real world with magic."
42
"I was suddenly left with nothing in my hands but a handful of crazy stars."
42
"You believed you could transcend the body as you aged, she tells herself. You believed you could rise above it, to a serene, nonphysical realm. But it's only through ecstasy you can do that, and ecstasy is achieved through the body itself. Without the bone and sinew of wings, no flight. Without that ecstasy you can only be dragged further down by the body, into its machinery. Its rusting, creaking, vengeful, brute machinery."
42
"Telling a story in a futuristic world gives you this freedom to explore things that bother you in contemporary times."
42
"I'm William, but you can call me Sexy. Everyone does."
42
"Millions of couples out there practiced the art of sadomasochism every day, without even realizing it. They went to work, came back, complained about everything, insulted their wife or were insulted by her, felt wretched, but were, nonetheless, tightly bound to their own unhappiness, not realizing that all it would take was a single gesture, a final goodbye, to free them from that oppression."
42
"And though it's a bleak thing to admit all these years later, still I've never met anyone who made me feel loved the way she did. Everything came alive in her company; she cast a charmed theatrical light about her so that to see anything through her eyes was to see it in brighter colors than ordinary."
42
"You boys going to get somewhere, or just going?" We didn't understand his question, and it was a damned good question."
42
"In his refusal to believe in anything supernatural or inherently evil, he was as unrealistic as an old voodoo queen who sees spirits everywhere."
42
"I once asked a hermit in Italy how he could venture to live alone, in a single cottage, on the top of a mountain, a mile from any habitation? He replied, that Providence was his next-door neighbor."
42
"Every month there is a moon, gigantic, round, heavy, an omen. IT transits, pauses, continues on and passes out of sight, and I see despair coming towards me like famine. To feel that empty, again, again. I listen to my heart, wave upon wave, salty and red, continuing on and on, marking time."
42
"A gentle breeze rustled through the leaves, bringing with it the scent of fresh-turned earth and lavender blossoms. Amanda drew to the side of the balcony, where she was completely concealed from view. As she leaned against the wall of the house, the rough texture of the red brick gently abraded her bare shoulders.She had worn a pale blue, corded-silk gown with a low-cut back, and draperies of gauze that crossed over the bodice in an X pattern. The long sleeves of the gown were made of more transparent gauze, while her hands were encased in white gloves. The flash of her bare arms beneath the filmy blue silk made Amanda feel sophisticated and daring."
42
"Pick ten strangers and stick them in a room, and ask them which of us they feel sorrier for - you or me - and we all know who they'll choose."
42
"I don't want to beone of those easily forgotten people, so important at the time, so special, soinfluential, and so treasured, yet years later just a vague face and a distantmemory."
42
"He loved her in spite of her unlovableness. Armande had many trying, though not necessarily rare, traits, all of which he accepted as absurd clues in a clever puzzle."
42
"He gave me the brochure. It was about the Hunters of Artemis. The front read, A WISE CHOICE FOR YOUR FUTURE! Inside were pictures of young maidens doing hunter stuff, chasing monsters, shooting bows. There were captions like: HEALTH BENEFITS: IMMORTALITY AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU! and A BOY-FREE TOMORROW!"I found that in Annabeth's backpack," Grover said.I stared at him. "I don't understand.""Well, it seems to me" maybe Annabeth was thinking about joining."I'd like to say I took the news well.The truth was, I wanted to strangle the Hunters of Artemis one eternal maiden at a time."
42
"I'm running on hate."
42
"You've thrown down the gauntlet. You've brought my wrath down upon your house. Now, to prove that I exist I must kill you. As the child outlives the father, so must the character bury the author. If you are, in fact, my continuing author, then killing you will end my existence as well. Small loss. Such a life, as your puppet, is not worth living. But If I destroy you and your dreck script, and I still exist, then my existence will be glorious, for I will become my own master."
42
"People where you live," the little prince said, "grow five thousand roses in one garden... yet they don't find what they're looking for...They don't find it," I answered.And yet what they're looking for could be found in a single rose, or a little water..."Of course," I answered.And the little prince added, "But eyes are blind. You have to look with the heart."
42
"Turns out making a dramatic exit is a lot harder when you have to stand there and wait another twenty minutes for a boat to dock."
42
"The process of composition, messing around with paragraphs and trying to make really good prose, is hardwired into my personality."
42
"Worth begets in base minds, envy; in great souls, emulation."
42
"The analysis of character is the highest human entertainment."
42
"They don't like the thought of someone else making demands on the person whom they see as belonging entirely to them."
42
"I was happy, but happy is an adult word. You don't have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not. Talking about it is the same as trying to catch the wind. Much easier to let it blow all over you. This is where I disagree with the philosophers. They talk about passionate things but there is no passion in them. Never talk happiness with a philosopher."
42
"Only the unknown frightens men. But once a man has faced the unknown, that terror becomes the known."
42
bottom of page