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Quotes by Novelist
"If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem."
37
"Above all, avoid lying, especially lying to yourself. Keep watching out for your lies, watch for them every hour, every minute. Also avoid disgust, both for others and yourself: whatever strikes you as disgusting within yourself is cleansed by the mere fact that you notice it.Avoid fear, too, although fear is really only a consequence of lies. Never be afraid of your petty selfishness when you try to achieve love and don't be too alarmed if you act badly on occasion."
37
"Nothing is more opaque than absolute transparency. Look-my feet don't hit the marble! Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising, I hover six inches in the air in my blazing swan-egg of light. You think I'm not a goddess? Try me. This is a torch song. Touch me and you'll burn."
37
"Getting something and having the wits to use it...those are two different things."
37
"We understand more than we know."
37
"The acceptance that all that is solid has melted into the air, that reality and morality are not givens but imperfect human constructs, is the point from which fiction begins."
37
"In all unmerciful actions, the worst of men pay this compliment at least to humanity, as to endeavour to wear as much of the appearance of it, as the case will well let them."
37
"Every word an author writes causes ripples, like tossing a stone into a pond. And you don't know where they'll go, or who they'll touch, or when they might come back to you. I think everything you do is kind of like that, too."
37
"What I've learned over the years is that people shouldn't be defined by a single mistake. Everyone messes up," she said. "You have to forgive yourself and move one."
37
"Everybody's after a new morning. What do we have to run up and salute tomorrow?"
37
"Well, that's it." I said after we had waited for another five minutes and found ourselves still in a state of pleasantly welcome existence. "The ChronoGuard has shut itself down and time travel is as it should be: technically, logically, and theoretically...impossible." "Good thing, too," reply Landon. "It always made my head ache. In fact, I was thinking of doing self help book for science-fiction novelists eager to write about time travel. It would consist of a single word: Don't."
37
"John shrugged. "It always seemed silly to me to desire a woman who cannot converse any better than a sheep."Belle leaned forward, her eyes glittering mischievously. "Really? I would have thought you'd prefer such a woman,considering your difficulty with polite conversation.""Touche, my lady. I cede this round to you."
37
"The only way to write is to write. Writers write. And when they've written, they write some more."
37
"Just as when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly."
37
"Campbell" Julia says "Don't do this to me""Do what?""Push me off the same cliff twice."
37
"There is no God, Nature sufficeth unto herself; in no wise hath she need of an author."
37
"When a thought is too weak to be expressed simply, it is a proof that it should be rejected."
37
"To enslave an individual troubles your consciences, Archivist, but to enslave a clone is no more troubling than owning the latest six-wheeler ford, ethically. Because you cannot discern our differences, you assume we have none. But make no mistake: even same-stem fabricants cultured in the same wombtank are as singular as snowflakes."
37
"In hell there is no other punishment than to begin over and over again the tasks left unfinished in your lifetime."
37
"That's the thing about destiny: It can't be predicted, and it's usually pretty odd."
37
"I think a playwright realizes after he finishes working on the script that this is only the beginning. What will happen when it moves into three dimensions?"
37
"I can't help but think that if she was going to kill herself, she might as well have done it earlier. Perhaps when I was a toddler. Or better yet, an infant. It certainly would have made my life easier. I asked my uncle Hugh (who is not really my uncle, but he is married to the stepsister of my current mother's brother's wife and he lives quite closeand he's a vicar) if I would be going to hell for such a thought. He said no, that frankly, it made a lot of sense to him. I do think I prefer his parish to my own."
37
"The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive self-denial, an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute."
37
"She watched the dark highway and entertained me with her vegetable-soup song, except that now there were people mixed in with the beans and potatoes: Dwayne Ray, Mattie, Esperanza, Lou Ann and all the rest. And me. I was the main ingredient."
37
"One gets to the heart of the matter by a series of experiences in the same pattern, but in different colors."
37
"It is when tomorrow's burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than a man can bear."
37
"I would find myself laughing and wondering where these ideas came from. You can call it imagination, I suppose. But I was grateful for wherever they came from."
37
"Aren't all fairy tales based in fact? You yourself are supposed to be nothing more than a myth.Pandora's box is a story parents read to their children at night, she countered. "That means life itself is afairy tale. Like the characters, we all live and love and search for a happily-ever-after."
37
"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but I might be a vampire so I don't give a shit. I'll heal."
37
"Leaves turned to soil beneath my feet. Thus it is, trees eat themselves."
37
"People who light up like Roman candles come down in the dark very quickly."
37
"Are the days of winter sunshine just as sad for you, too? When it is misty, in the evenings, and I am out walking by myself, it seems to me that the rain is falling through my heart and causing it to crumble into ruins."
37
"His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred."
37
"Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses."
37
"How badly arranged the world is. What is the purpose of ugliness, suffering, sadness? Why our powerless dreams? Why everything?"
37
"Feminism was good for me, as were any number of causes, but as I developed as a thinking person, the truisms and dogmas of every ideology became as worn as that book's cover."
37
"Papilio stomachus: fragile creatures, vulnerable to forst and betrayal."
37
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