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Quotes by Novelist
"The art of living does not consist in preserving and clinging to a particular mode of happiness, but in allowing happiness to change its form without being disappointed by the change; happiness, like a child, must be allowed to grow up."
36
"Art is the collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better."
36
"An incinerator is a writer's best friend."
36
"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever i find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet... I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me."
36
"I look around briefly at the other players like I always do before a game. Other than Queenie, Bill, and Talon, I don't know any of them (and I don't care enough about them to know them). But if there's going to be any cordiality, any forced politeness or 'Aw, shucks, let's all just try to have a good time here tonight' kind of blather, then now's the time to get it out of the way before I get down to the business of screwing everyone out of their hopes and dreams."
36
"When you love someone all your saved up wishes start coming out."
36
"The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes."
36
"These are open secrets, so to speak. Of the kind we dare not articulate, for fear of wounding those close to us."
36
"So much for endings. Beginnings are always more fun. True connoisseurs, however, are known to favor the stretch in between, since it's the hardest to do anything with. That's about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what."
36
"The devil is a very big angel, but a very little man."
36
"Why does anything cling to something? Maybe they love wherever they're going so much that it's worth it. Maybe they'll keep coming back, until there's only one star left. Maybe that one star will make the trip forever, out of the hope that someday-if it keeps coming back often enough-another star will find it again."
36
"Okay, this is the wisdom. First, time spent on reconnaissanse is never wasted. Second, almost anything can be improved with the addition of bacon. And finally, there is no problem on Earth that can't be ameliorated by a hot bath and a cup of tea."
36
"The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted, and when it be obeyed."
36
"One morning at the end of the two years, as I was writing a letter to his dictation, he came and bent over me, and said--"Jane, have you a glittering ornament round your neck?" I had a gold watch-chain: I answered "Yes." "And have you a pale blue dress on?I had. He informed me then, that for some time he had fancied the obscurity clouding one eye was becoming less dense; and that now he was sure of it."
36
"Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is good for dandruff - it is a palliative rather than a remedy."
36
"The the glow become brighter: a holographic golden sickle with a few sheaves of wheat, rotating just above Meg McCaffrey.A boy in the crowd gasped. 'She's a communist!'A girl who'd been sitting at Cabin Four's table gave him a disgusted sneer. 'No, Damien, that's my mom's symbol."
36
"His words were coated with glorious boredom."
36
"The theater of the mind is impossible to compete with, and I like the idea that with a few suggestions, each reader forms in his or her own mind what a character or a place looks like."
36
"I was condemned to be beheaded, or burnt, as the king pleased; and he was graciously pleased, from the great remains of his love, to choose the mildest sentence."
Love,
36
"Butch hesitated. "Annabeth's okay. You gotta cut her some slack. She had a vision telling her to come here, to find a guy with one shoe. That was supposed to be the answer to her problem.""What Problem?" Piper asked."She's been looking for one of our campers, who's been missing three days," Butch said. "She's going out of her mind with worry. She hoped he'd be here.""Who?" Jason asked."Her boyfriend," Butch said, "A guy named Percy Jackson."
36
"I think that if people are instructed about anything, it should be about the nature of cruelty. And about why people behave so cruelly to each other. And what kind of satisfactions they derive from it. And why there is always a cost, and a price to be paid."
36
"Her suspense was terrible."
36
"The best that an individual can do is to concentrate on what he or she can do, in the course of a burning effort to do it better."
36
"We build statues out of snow, and weep to see them melt."
36
"The most important trait of a writer is an authentic voice. Writers have to have faith in their own voice, and their own way of doing things. Originality is the gem that every writer possesses. Originality also brings on the most merciless attacks. The world resents originality in the beginning writer, and then rewards it abundantly once that writer has been successfully published. Cherish your own voice. Don't try to sound like anybody else. Sound like yourself and take the slings and arrows and keep going."
36
"He may care for her, though she really has been almost rude to him at times. But she! ' why, Margaret would never think of him, I'm sure! Such a thing has never entered her head.'Entering her heart would do."
36
"Writers seem to me to be people who need to retire from social life and do a lot of thinking about what's happened - almost to calm themselves."
36
"There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul."
36
"Love is more than blind. It's brain-dead."
36
"This had already been the best sex she'd ever had and all he'd done was touch her."
36
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