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Quotes by Novelist
"In America, we have the feeling of the doomed young artist. Fitzgerald was the great example of that."
37
"Put the case that he lived in an atmosphere of evil, and that all he saw of children was their being generated in great numbers for certain destruction. Put the case that he often saw children solemnly tried at a criminal bar, where they were held up to be seen; put the case that he habitually knew of their being imprisoned, whipped, transported, neglected, cast out, qualified in all ways for the hangman, and growing up to be hanged. Put the case that pretty nigh all the children he saw in his daily business life he had reason to look upon as so much spawn, to develop into the fish that were to come to his net,""to be prosecuted, defended, forsworn, made orphans, bedevilled somehow."
37
"Yeah, about that, says Peeta, entwining his fingers in mine. "Don't try something like that again. "Or what? I ask. "Or . . . or . . . He can't think of anything good. "Just give me a minute."
37
"But this is neither here nor there why do I mention it? Ask my pen, it governs me, I govern not it."
37
"What she really meant was: here is my heart, have a care."
37
"Individuality is the aim of political liberty. By leaving the citizen as much freedom of action and of being as comports with order and the rights of others, the institutions render him truly a freeman. He is left to pursue his means of happiness in his own manner."
37
"Some men storm imaginary Alps all their lives, and die in the foothills cursing difficulties which do not exist."
37
"I believe there's no proverb but what is true; they are all so many sentences and maxims drawn from experience, the universal mother of sciences."
37
"There is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means, draw it all out, and hold him to it."
37
"Only the foolish, blinded by language's conventions, think of fire as red or gold. Fire is blue at it's melancholy rim, green in it's envious heart. It may burn white, or even, in it's greatest rages, black."
37
"How do you know you're going to do something, untill you do it?"
37
"When people start writing there is this idea that you have to get everything right first time, every sentence has to be perfect, every paragraph has to be perfect, every chapter has to be perfect, but what you're doing is not any kind of public show, until you're ready for it."
37
"A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life."
Life,
37
"But, though I was very much in lust with him, I knew from the start we were nothing like "forever." Maybe because forever is such a scary place."
37
"Killing myself was a matter of such indifference to me that I felt like waiting for a moment when it would make some difference."
37
"Herman Melville was as separated from a civilized literature as the lost Atlantis was said to have been from the great peoples of the earth."
37
"Happiness is a sunbeam which may pass through a thousand bosoms without losing a particle of its original ray; nay, when it strikes on a kindred heart, like the converged light on a mirror, it reflects itself with redoubled brightness. It is not perfected till it is shared."
37
"When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer."
37
"A hero can go anywhere, challenge anyone, as long as he has the nerve."
37
"All human states are organic brain states - happiness, sadness, fear, lust, dreaming, doing math problems and writing novels - and our brains are not static."
37
"The criminal is trying to solve his immediate problems."
37
"Slowly, but with no doubt or hesitation whatever, and in something of a solemn expectancy, the two animals passed through the broken tumultuous water and moored their boat at the flowery margin of the island."
37
"The point is to balance on the edge between musicality and content."
37
"Make sure that when you touch the other person, all your five senses are working, because sex has a life of its own. The moment you begin, you're no longer in control; it takes control of you. And whatever you bring to it, your fears, your desires, your sensibility will remain. That's why people become impotent. When you have sex, take with you to bed only love and your senses, all five of them. Only then will you experience communion with God."
37
"When a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it."
37
"Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom."
37
"Imagination only comes when you privilege the subconscious, when you make delay and procrastination work for you."
37
"No one in my family was a reader of literary fiction. So, I didn't have encouragement, but I didn't have discouragement, because I don't think anybody knew what that meant."
37
"That's the difference between irony and sarcasm. Irony can be spontaneous, while sarcasm requires volition. You have to create sarcasm."
37
"Walking across campus made me feel sad, and I thought to myself, I wasn't happy there. Then, after reading, we walked past Butler Library. It was dark, but the light inside illuminated the windows. Students were reading and working, and those lit windows gave me a wonderful, weightless feeling. I understood for the first time how happy I had been there - in the library."
37
"Motherhood is a Sisyphean task. You finish sewing one seam shut, and another rips open. I have come to believe that this life I'm wearing will never really fit."
37
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