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Quotes by Novelist
"When...did it become irrational to dislike religion, any religion, even to dislike it vehemently? When did reason get redescribed as unreason? When were the fairy stories of the superstitious placed above criticism, beyond satire? A religion was not a race. It was an idea, and ideas stood (or fell) because they were strong enough (or too weak) to withstand criticism, not because they were shielded from it. Strong ideas welcomed dissent."
39
"The prosecutor, who is supposed to carry the burden of proof, really is an author."
39
"In moments Akiva was up in the ether, scarcely feeling the sting of ice crystals in the thin air. He let his glamour fall away, and his wings were like sheets of fire sweeping the black of the heavens. He moved at speed, onward toward another human city to find another doorway bitter with the devil's magic, and after that another, until all bore the black handprint....Once all the doors were marked, the end would begin. And it would begin with fire."
39
"The world moves on so fast, and we lose all chance of being the women our mothers were; we lose all understanding of what shaped them."
39
"It is better, however, for his own reputation that the story-teller should risk a few actions for libel on account of these unfortunate coincidences than that he should adopt the melancholy device of using blanks or asterisks."
39
"All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac."
39
"To his inner ear, the cardinal speaks. He says, I saw you, Crumb, when you were at Elvetham: scratching your balls in the dawn and wondering at the violence of the king's whims. If he wants a new wife, fix him one. I didn't, and I am dead."
39
"Young readers have to be entertained. No child reads fiction because they think it's going to make them a better person."
39
"Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running-that's the way to live. All alone and free in the soft sands of the beach by the sigh of the sea out there, with the Ma-Wink fallopian virgin warm stars reflecting on the outer channel fluid belly waters. And if your cans are redhot and you can't hold them in your hands, just use good old railroad gloves, that's all."
39
"Our accepting what we are must always inhibit our being what we ought to be."
39
"I must warn you that the books I like are not necessarily the ones I think are the best. I like them for various reasons not always easy to explain."
39
"Voice comes to you through a spell, a trance. The best voices are not you... they're a little away from you."
39
"I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short time of space."
39
"You are like a chestnut burr, prickly outside, but silky-soft within, and a sweet kernel, if one can only get at it. Love will make you show your heart some day, and then the rough burr will fall off."
39
"Religion has nothing to do with God. It's a fundamental attitude of human beings, who ask about the origins of life and what happens after death. For many, the answer is a personal god. In my opinion, it's religion that produces God, not the other way round."
39
"The soul ... has a slow and dark birth, more mysterious than the birth of the body. When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets."
39
"Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us."
39
"And yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood."
39
"The advice is a call to empathy, the ultimate act of the imagination, and the true ground of all fiction."
39
"My heart almost died within me; miserable longings strained its chords. How long were the September days! How silent, how lifeless!"
39
"One day, I shall explode like an artillery shell and all my bits will be found on the writing table."
39
"I've never seen a man who understands so little about women and yet is so led about by them."
39
"A woman would rather visit her own grave than the place where she has been young and beautiful after she is aged and ugly."
39
"It's possible, and I stress possible, that such a moment may never come: you may not fall in love, you may not be able to or you may not wish to give your whole life to anyone, and, like me, you may turn forty-five one day and realize that you're no longer young and you have never found a choir of cupids with lyres or a bed of white roses leading to the altar. The only revenge left for you then will be to steal from life the pleasure of firm and passionate flesh - a pleasure that evaporates faster than good intentions and is the nearest thing to heaven you will find in this stinking world where everything decays, beginning with beauty and ending with memory."
39
"The companion of an evening, and the companion for life, require very different qualifications."
39
"Relationships are nine parts intuition, one part madness."
39
"You don't destroy what you want toacquire in the future."
39
"The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true-- not true, or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe."
39
"All I know is that once Julián told the kids in the building that he had a sister only he could see. He said she came out of mirrors as if she were made of thin air, and that she lived with Satan himself in a palace at the bottom of a lake."
39
"You groan and shake your head, Sixsmith, I know, but you smile too, which is why I love you."
39
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