Quotes by Novelists - Page 39

I also believe in cigarettes, cholesterol, alcohol, carbon monoxide, masturbation, the Arts Council, nuclear weapons, the Daily Telegraph, and not properly labeling fatal poisons, but above all else, most of all, I believe in the one thing that can come out of people's mouths: vomit.
Dennis Potter
There is no need for me to curse you -the murderer survives the victim only to learn that it was himself that he longed to be rid of. Hatred is self-hatred.
Thornton Wilder
The reason is obvious. You're my grandfather, okay. Like it or not, you're who you are and i'm who i am. And i'm here right now, so what are we going to do about it? -Adam Cayhall-
John Grisham
Ain’t nothing wrong with a little crew love!” True mocked her.
K'wan
Beware of advice—even this.
Carl Sandburg
Be careful, Hally.""Of what? The truth? I seem to be the only one around here who is prepared to face it.
Athol Fugard
I wake in the night. Or sometimes I don't wake in the night. It hardly seems to make a difference.
Nicci French
A hound will die for you, but never lie to you.
George R.R. Martin
Personally, I think, so what? Money's just a thing and things change. That's what I've found. One minute something's really there, right next to you, and you can cuddle up to it. The next it just melts away, like a Hershey's kiss.
Frank Cottrell Boyce
Work so hard that even hard worksays damn he is tougherthan me :)
shivangi lavaniya
Worse than madness. Sanity.
William Golding
You don’t appreciate the fact that madmen are very lucky.
Luigi Pirandello
In his madness he became a terrifying actor!
Luigi Pirandello
Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who you are" is true enough, but I'd know you better if you told me what you reread.
François Mauriac
An exaltation of spirit lifted me, as it were, far above the earth and the sinful creatures crawling on its surface; and I deemed myself as an eagle among the children of men, soaring on high, and looking down with pity and contempt on the grovelling creatures below.
James Hogg
It is madness. But sometimes, madness is the only path forward.
Anne Fortier
How bizarre, i think to myself, to be on a train and to actually not want to arrive anywhere? What kind of madness is that?
Jackie Kay
Do you think that too," she said, "that I have slept too long in the moonlight?
Jean Rhys
We are all subjected to two distinct natures in the same person. I myself have suffered grievously in that way.
James Hogg
Since I neither want not can influence the events of the world, my mission is to preserve the internal integrity and equilibrium of my mind; that will be in which the manor in which I recover the purity of the original act; I shall be my own citadel, and to it I shall retire to protect myself against a hostile and corrupt world. I shall be my own citadel and, within it, my own and only citizen.
Carlos Fuentes
Of Love and Other Demons (Vintage International) - Gabriel GarcÍA MÁRquez (Highlight: 5; Note: 0)-------------"Crazy people are not crazy if one accepts their reasoning."(Chapter:Chapter Two)"What is essential, therefore, is not that you no longer believe, but that God continues to believe in you. And regarding that there can be no doubt, for it is He in His infinite diligence who has enlightened us so that we may offer you this consolation.”"(Chapter:Chapter Two)"Disbelief is more resistant than faith because it is sustained by the senses"(Chapter:Chapter Two)"Take care,” said Delaura. “Sometimes we attribute certain things we do not understand to the demon, not thinking they may be things of God that we do not understand.”"(Chapter:Chapter Three)". He confessed that every moment was filled with thoughts of her, that everything he ate and drank tasted of her, that she was his life, always and everywhere, as only God had the right and power to be, and that the supreme joy of his heart would be to die with her. "(Chapter:Chapter Five)
Gabriel García Márquez
Sometimes I wonder if the human race isn't collectively as mad as a sack of door knobs.
Jasper Fforde
Bashere shrugged, grinning brhind his grey-streaked moustaches, "When I first slept in a saddle, Muad Cheade was Marshal-General. The man was as mad as a hare in spring thaw. Twice every day he searched his bodyservant for poison, and he drank nothing but vinegar and water which he claimed was sovereign against the poison the fellow fed him, but he ate everything the man prepared for as long as I knew him. Once he had a grove of oaks chopped down because they were looking at him. And then insisted they be given decent funerals; he gave the oration. Do you have any idea how long it takes to dig graves for twenty-three oak trees?" "Why didn't somebody do something? His Family?" "Those not as mad as him, or madder, were afraid to look at him sideways. Tenobia's father wouldn't have let anyone touch Cheade anyway. He might have been insane, but he could outgeneral anyone I ever saw. He never lost a battle. He never even came close to losing.
Robert Jordan
O God, I love you to the edge of madness, Venetia, but I'm not mad yet--not so mad that I don't know how disastrous it might be to you--to us both! You don't realize what an advantage I should be taking of your innocence!
Georgette Heyer
Sanity is a madness put to good uses.
George Santayana
He in his madness prays for storms, and dreams that storms will bring him peace
Mikhail Lermontov
Perfection is such a nuisance that I often regret having cured myself of using tobacco.
Émile Zola
Not his match! And have you not the heart in you to be anything but best? How many are his match? How many in this world do you think stand in the front rank? Are all the rest of us to give up and sit on our hands rather than serve humbly where we deserve?
Edith Pargeter
Sometimes to return is a vulgarity.
John Fowles
A young woman stood before the railing, speaking to the reception clerk. Her slender body seemed out of all scale in relation to a normal human body; its lines were so long, so fragile, so exaggerated that she looked like a stylized drawing of a woman and made the correct proportions of a normal being appear heavy and awkward beside her. She wore a plain gray suit; the contrast between its tailored severity and her appearance was deliberately exorbitant—and strangely elegant.She let the finger tips of one hand rest on the railing, a narrow hand ending the straight imperious line of her arm. She had gray eyes that were not ovals, but two long, rectangular cuts edged by parallel lines of lashes; she had an air of cold serenity and an exquisitely vicious mouth. Her face, her pale gold hair, her suit seemed to have no color, but only a hint, just on the verge of the reality of color, making the full reality seem vulgar. Keating stood still, because he understood for the first time what it was that artists spoke about when they spoke of beauty.
Ayn Rand
...Is it an inspiring sight to see a man commit a heroic gesture, and then learn that he goes to vaudeville shows for relaxation? Or see a man who’s painted a magnificent canvas—and learn that he spends his time sleeping with every slut he meets?”“What do you want? Perfection?”“—or nothing. So, you see, I take the nothing.
Ayn Rand
His face was like a law of nature—a thing one could not question, alter or implore. It had high cheekbones over gaunt, hollow cheeks; gray eyes, cold and steady; a contemptuous mouth, shut tight, the mouth of an executioner or a saint.
Ayn Rand
I take your name whenever i give example of perfection...
shivangi lavaniya
Imperfection is Perfection.Small errors required to display the true quality of gaps in between to create meaning and essence of reality. What good is anything if it isn't flawed and produces only that which emit ideal situations.
Shlomo Reuben
Bach felt the beauty and sadness of the moment. These men who defied the power of the Russian heavy artillery, these coarse, hardened soldiers who were dispirited by their lack of ammunition and tormented by vermin and hunger had all understood at once that what they needed more than anything in the world was not bread, not bandages, not ammunition, but these tiny branches twined with useless tinsel, these orphanage toys.
Vasily Grossman
Patsy had asked him if he had had adventures in Paris and he had truthfully answered no. It was a fact that he had done nothing; his father thought he had had a devil of a time and was afraid he had contracted a venereal disease, and he hadn't even had a woman; only one thing had happened to him, it was rather curious when you came to think of it, and he didn't just then quite know what to do about it: the bottom had fallen out of his world.
W Somerset Maugham
A Christmas gambol oft could cheerThe poor man's heart through half the year.
Walter Scott
You're fighting this war in the worst way possible." "I don't know how to fight it, Dad.""You should ask for help," he said."I don't know how to do that, either.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
A sweet fruit for a sweet fight.
George R.R. Martin
All this time I had been trying to figure out the secrets of theuniverse, the secrets of my own body, of my own heart. All of the answers had always been soclose and yet I had always fought them without even knowing it. From the minute I’d met Dante, Ihad fallen in love with him. I just didn’t let myself know it, think it, feel it. My father was right.And it was true what my mother said. We all fight our own private wars.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
I wil not heat treason from my own daughterWhat will you do behead me for treason? We are not an amry at warWe are an army at war! This is your brother's rightful throne that we are talking about
Philippa Gregory
I must fight with my weapons. Not his. Not selfishness and brutality and shame and resentment.
John Fowles
Always walk away from a fight. Then ambush.
Tim Dorsey
‎"The days are hot and the dead lie unburied. We cannot fetch them all in, if we did we should not know what to do with them. The shells will bury them...
Enrich M. Remarque
When you look at pictures of people you know are dead, there is something different about the eyes. As if they anticipated their particular fate.It is a visceral recognition. I told myself I was getting too fanciful and went to bed.
John D. MacDonald
Her past is behind her, her future is of little concern. She moves towards the grave, at her own speed.
Anne Enright
And then the sword came down like a flash of lightning, and then her head was off her body and the long rivalry between me and the other Boleyn girl was over.
Philippa Gregory
Did not we vow that we would neither of us be either before or after the other even in travelling the last journey of life? And can you find it in your heart to leave me now?
Murasaki Shikibu
t nightfall, atthe oppressive moment of transition, a storm of carnivorous mosquitoes roseout of the swamps, and a tender breath of human shit, warm and sad, stirredthe certainty of death in the depths of one’s soul.
Gabriel García Márquez
Everything I see reminds me that in a few days I shall no longer see it... It's horrible... I shall see nothing more... nothing of what exists... the smallest objects that we use... glasses... plates... beds where people sleep so comfortably... carriages. It's so lovely, going out in a carriage, in the evening... How much I enjoyed all that!
Guy de Maupassant
Don't worry," he would say, smiling. "Dying is much more difficult than one imagines.
Gabriel García Márquez
Each man is master of his own death and all that we can do when the time comes is to help him die without fear of pain.
Gabriel García Márquez
And what after all, is death?? 'Tis but a cessation from mortal life; 'tis but the finishing of an appointed course; the refreshing inn after a fatiguing journey; the end of a life of cares and troubles; and, if happy, the beginning of a life of immortal happiness.
Samuel Richardson
Your body's dying...pay no attention
Anne Rice
He had visited his family the evening before, eaten dinner with Renee and Chris, his grandson, in the pretence that everything was ordinary, but in fact to service his end-game ruse. He was going over the mountains, he'd said, to hunt for quail in willow canyons, he had no particular canyons in mind, he intended to return on Thursday evening, though possibly, if the hunting was good, he would return on Friday or Saturday. The lie was open-ended so that his family wouldn't start worrying until he'd been dead for as long as a week - so none would miss or seek him where he rotted silently in the sage. Ben imagined how it might be otherwise, his cancer a pestilent force in their lives, or a pall descending over them like ice, just as they'd begun to emerge from the pall of Rachel's death. The last thing they needed was for Ben to tell hem of his terminal colon cancer.
David Guterson
Fran had from an unsuitably early age been attracted by the heroic death, the famous last words, the tragic farewell. Her parents had on their shelves a copy of Brewer's 'Dictionary of Phase and fable', a book which, as a teenager, she would morbidly browse for hours. One of her favourite sections was 'Dying Sayings', with its fine mix of the pious, the complacent, the apocryphal, the bathetic and the defiant. Artists had fared well: Beethoven was alleged to have said 'I shall hear in heaven'; the erotic painter Etty had declared 'Wonderful! Wonderful this death!'; and Keats had died bravely, generously comforting his poor friend Severn.Those about to be executed had clearly had time to prepare a fine last thought, and of these she favoured the romantic Walter Raleigh's, 'It matters little how the head lies, so the heart be right'. Harriet Martineau, who had suffered so much as a child from religion, as Fran had later discovered, had stoically remarked, 'I see no reason why the existence of Harriet Martineau should be perpetuated', an admirably composed sentiment which had caught the child Fran's attention long before she knew who Harriet Martineau was. But most of all she had liked the parting of Siward the Dane who had commended his men: 'Lift me up that I may die standing, not lying down like a cow'.
Margaret Drabble
She wasted and grew so thin that she no longer was a little girl, but the shadow of a little girl. The flame of her life flickered so faintly that it appeared sufficient to blow at it to extinguish it. Stas understood that death did not have to wait for a third attack to take her and he expected it any day or any hour.
Henryk Sienkiewicz
We are so afraid of the idea of having to die… that we always try to find excuses for the dead, as if we were asking beforehand to be excused when it is our turn…
José Saramago
It is best as one grows older to strip oneself of possessions, to shed oneself downward like a tree, to be almost wholly earth before one dies.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
In 7.81 square miles of vaunted black community, the 850 square feet of Dum Dum Donuts was the only place in the "community" where one could experience the Latin root of the word, where a citizen could revel in common togetherness. So one rainy Sunday afternoon, not long after the tanks and media attention had left, my father ordered his usual. He sat at the table nearest the ATM and said aloud, to no one in particular, "Do you know that the average household net worth for whites is $113,149 per year, Hispanics $6,325, and black folks $5,677?""For real?""What's your source material, nigger?""The Pew Research Center."Motherfuckers from Harvard to Harlem respect the Pew Research Center, and hearing this, the concerned patrons turned around in their squeaky plastic seats as best they could, given that donut shop swivel chairs swivel only six degrees in either direction. Pops politely asked the manager to dim the lights. I switched on the overhead projector, slid a transparency over the glass, and together we craned our necks toward the ceiling, where a bar graph titled "Income Disparity as Determined by Race" hovered overhead like some dark, damning, statistical cumulonimbus cloud threatening to rain on our collective parades."I was wondering what that li'l nigger was doing in a donut shop with a damn overhead projector.
Paul Beatty