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Quotes by Novelist
"Joan Durbeyfield always manged to find consolation somewhere: 'Well, as one of the genuine stock, she ought to make her way with 'en, if she plays her trump car aright. And if he don't marry her afore he will after. For that he's all afire wi' love for her any eye can see.' 'What's her trump card? Her d'Urberville blood, you mean?' 'No, stupid; her face - as 'twas mine."
41
"If one book's done this well, you want to write another one that does just as well. There's that horror of the second novel that doesn't match up."
41
"A faithful friend is a strong defense; And he that hath found him hath found a treasure."
41
"Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else ... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it."
41
"To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme."
41
"Vronsky meanwhile, in spite of the complete fulfilment of what he had so long desired, was not completely happy. He soon felt that the realization of his longing gave him only one grain of the mountain of bliss he had anticipated. That realization showed him the eternal error men make by imagining that happiness consists in the gratification of their wishes. When first he united his life with hers and donned civilian clothes, he felt the delight of freedom in general, such as he had not before known, and also the freedom of love-he was contented then, but not for long. Soon he felt rising in his soul a desire for desires-boredom. Involuntarily he began to snatch at every passing caprice, mistaking it for a desire and a purpose."
41
"The giant beech next door intends to shiver off every hair of its pelt."
41
"Pierre had for the first time experienced that strange and fascinating feeling in the Slobodsky palace, when he suddenly felt that wealth and power and life, all that men build up and guard with such effort ,is only worth anything through the joy with which it can all be cast away."
41
"Let all of life be an unfettered howl."
41
"Toate familiile fericite se aseamAƒnAƒ A®ntre ele. Fiecare familie nefericitAƒ este nefericitAƒ A®n felul ei."
41
"The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself."
41
"But love wasn't about sacrifice, and it wasn't about falling short of someone's expectations. By definition, love made you better than good enough; it redefined perfection to include your traits, instead of excluding them. All any of us wanted, really, was to know that we counted. That someone else's life would not have been as rich without us here."
41
"From early childhood his mother had taught him that to discuss in public a profound emotional experience-which, in the open air, immediately evanesces and fades, and, oddly, becomes similar to an analogous experience of one's interlocutor-was not only vulgar, but also a sin against sentiment."
41
"Dream manfully and nobly, and thy dreams shall be prophets."
40
"I shall no longer be instructed by the Yoga Veda or the Aharva Veda, or the ascetics, or any other doctrine whatsoever. I shall learn from myself, be a pupil of myself; I shall get to know myself, the mystery of Siddhartha." He looked around as if he were seeing the world for the first time."
40
"Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth's fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread."
40
"Irishmen are not reserved, and the company appeared dying to be intimately acquainted."
40
"A few fires flickered, plumes of dark smoke marring the ruby sky."
40
"I wrote two plotted books, got some of the fundamentals of storytelling down, then... it's sort of like taking the training wheels off, trying to write a book that's fun in the same way without relying on quite such mechanical or external beats."
40
"One of the delights known to age, and beyond the grasp of youth, is that of Not Going."
40
"How deaf and stupid I have been, he thought, walking on quickly. When anyone reads anything which he wishes to study, he does not despise the letters and punctuation marks, and call them illusion, chance and worthless shells, but he reads them, he studies and loves them, letter by letter. But I, who wished to read the book of the world and of my own nature, did presume to despise the letters and signs. I called the world of appearances, illusion. I called my eyes and tongue, chance. Now it is over; I have awakened."
40
"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness."
40
"Walking along past the store windows, into which she peers with her usual eagerness, her usual sense that maybe, today, she will discover behind them something that will truly be worth seeing, she feels as if her feet are not on cement at all but on ice. The blade of the skate floats, she knows, on a thin film of water, which it melts by pressure and which freezes behind it. This is the freedom of the present tense, this sliding edge."
40
"Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness."
40
"Writers in repressive societies are considered dangerous. That's why so many of them are in jail."
40
"A book begins with an image or character or situation that I care about deeply."
40
"The only thing I can recall is that it rained all day and all night, and that when I asked my father whether heaven was crying, he couldn't bring himself to reply. Six years later my mother's absence remained in the air around us, a deafening silence that I had not yet learned to stifle with words."
40
"No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye."
40
"Each marriage has to be judged separately, and we never know what's going on in another person's marriage."
40
"The Angeles air was quiet, and for a while I laid still, listening to the sound of Maxon breathing."
40
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