Quotes by Novelists - Page 42

Juliet by Ann Fortier. The Maestro (Chapter5) ... the slight nausea he was feeling must be somewhat near what God was feeling every minute of every day. If indeed He felt anything. He was, after all, a divine being, and it was entirely conceivable that divinity was incompatible with emotion. If not, then the Maestro sincerely pitied God, for the history of mankind was nothing more than a long tale of tears.
Anne Fortier
I have no ambition to change my nature, I merely intend to conquer my dislikes.
Georges Bernanos
God gives us life, but the world's landlord is the devil....
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
We're only given one life, and it's the one we live, she had thought; how painful now, to realize that wasn't true, that you would have different lives, depending on how brave you were, and how ready.
Samuel Park
I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretence, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew. Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the faces of a danger it is unable to comprehend.
Joseph Conrad
When trouble comes, close ranks
Jean Rhys
But secluding my experience during that early period was both cowardly and wise. Some things are too fragile, too vulnerable to bring into the public eye. Tender things with tiny roots tend to wither in the glare of public scrutiny. By holding my awakening within, I contained the energy of it, and it fed me the way blood feeds muscle. It fed me a certain propelling energy, and I kept moving forward.
Sue Monk Kidd
We get most of our energy from complications.
Imraan Coovadia
Often, people get a temporary high, a fleeting sense of belonging and well-being from the illusion of strength that comes from attaching themselves to gurus, without realizing that the energy they associate with the so called holy person comes from within themselves.
Indu Muralidharan
It takes so much energy to keep things at bay.
Sue Monk Kidd
Writing, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.
Laurence Sterne
I try to write a certain amount each day, five days a week. A rule sometimes broken is better than no rule.
Herman Wouk
I believe in saints as I believe in sanctity. I believe in miracles as I believe in God, who can suspend the laws of His own making. But I believe, too, that the hand of God writes plainly and simply, for all men of good will to read. I am doubtful of His presence in confusion and conflicting voices.
Morris West
You will all be assailed, my dear friends, by the very real temptation to believe that you have been forsaken by God – that your priesthood is in vain, and that the weight of mortal grief and sin is more than you can bear. In the midst of your anguish you will ask of Him a sign, some visible ray of His unchanging light in a world of hideous darkness. I am sorry to say that this visible sign will rarely be given. The burning bush of Moses, the jewel-encrusted dove of Theresa, the Tolle lege of Augustine – these are no longer the style, as in the simpler days of saint and prophet. The light will be interior; you must look for it within
Henry Morton Robinson
It is an indication of truth's jealousy that it has not made for anyone a path to it, and that it has not deprived anyone of the hope of attaining it, and it has left people running in the deserts of perplexity and drowning in the seas of doubt; and he who thinks he has attained it, it dissociates itself from, and he who thinks he has dissociated himself from it has lost his way.
Naguib Mahfouz
...he began to fear whether in the presence of far greater events, all his acts would not fade into insignificance, just as a drop of rain disappears into the sea.
Henryk Sienkiewicz
They were like two poor little leaves in a storm which bore death and annihilation not only to the heads of individuals, but to whole towns and entire tribes. What hand could snatch it and save two small, defenseless children?
Henryk Sienkiewicz
He would not now conduct little Nell to the coast; he would not convey her by a steamer to Port Said, would not surrender her to Mr. Rawlinson; he himself would not fall into his father's arms and would not hear from his lips that he had acted like a true Pole! The end, the end! In a few days the sun would shine only upon the lifeless bodies and afterwards would dry them up into a semblance of those mummies which slumber in an eternal sleep in the museums in Egypt
Henryk Sienkiewicz
Everything is false, everything is possible, everything is doubtful.
Guy de Maupassant
Why is it, I wonder, that people suffer, when there is so little need, when an effort of will and some hard work would bring them from their misery into peace and contentment.
Richard Llewellyn
1776: A declaration of the Parlement of Paris:The first rule of justice is to conserve for each individual that which belongs to him. This is a fundamental rule of natural law, human rights and civil government; a rule which consists not only in maintaining the rights of property, but also those rights vested in the individual and derived from prerogatives of birth and social position.
Hilary Mantel
And if a diversion is needed, why not arrest a general? Arthur Dillon is a friend of eminent deputies, a contender for the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Front; he has proved himself at Valmy and in a halfdozen actions since. In the National Assembly he was a liberal; now he is a republican. Isn’t it then logical that he should be thrown into gaol, July 1, on suspicion of passing military secrets to the enemy?
Hilary Mantel
I got mixed up with some oddness in my youth, and the long and short of it is that I can't shuffle off this mortal coil until I have read the ten most boring classics.
Jasper Fforde
To condemn slavery was one thing—that I could do in my own individual heart—but female ministers!
Sue Monk Kidd
In spite of her superficial independence, her fundamental need was to cling.All her life was an attempt to disprove it; and so proved it. She was like a sea anemone -- had only to be touched once to adhere to what touched her.
John Fowles
Irony is a gift of the gods, the most subtle of all the modes of speech. It is an armour and a weapon; it is a philosophy and a perpetual entertainment; it is food for the hungry of wit and drink to those thirsting for laughter...
W Somerset Maugham
Sixty years of virginity tried in vain to dam the waters of instinct as they burst through the granite of good intentions,the rock of irreproachablee conduct.
René Crevel
I got this to say. You're acting like a crowd of kids.
William Golding
There is no greater cruelty than a genius stumbling over something idiotic.
Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Every misogynist came out of a woman.
Mat Johnson
irony is for a traveler while traveling, happiness increases as the distance increases.
shivangi lavaniya
You are so lost to your higher self that you would resent me for my achievements, rather than celebrate them with me, sexually?
Ayn Rand
Irony takes nothing away from pathos.
Gustave Flaubert
He was one of the most supremely stupid men I have ever met. He taught me a great deal.
John Fowles
Our world will not die as the result of the bomb, as the papers say, it will die of laughter, of banality, or making a joke of everything, and a lousy joke at that.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
The things I do for love.
George R.R. Martin
It was growing late, and though one might stand on the brink of a deep chasm of disaster, one was still obliged to dress for dinner.
Georgette Heyer
I cannot come with you, my prince," he said with great tenderness, as he kneeled over the sleeping Neriah and placed the chain around his neck. "But perhaps, when you sleep, you will dream of me." He touched his hand to Neriah's forehead and whispered, "Now, forget me.
Shira Anthony
...nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something.
John Irving
...the demands of writing and of real life are not always similar.
John Irving
Novel writing is mostly triage (this now, that later) and obstinacy. Trying something, and when that doesn't work, trying something else. Welcoming clutter Surrendering a good idea for a better one. Knowing you won't find the finish line for a year or two, or five...
Richard Russo
Of course, if I write a first-person novel about a woman writer, I am inviting every book reviewer to apply the autobiographical label -- to conclude that I am writing about myself. But one must never not write a certain kind of novel out of fear of what the reaction to it will be.
John Irving
And maybe it was fair; if a book was any good, it was a slap in the face to someone.
John Irving
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.
Anne Rice
A novel is always more complicated than it seems at the beginning. Indeed a novel should be more complicated than it seems at the beginning.
John Irving
On writing, my advice is the same to all. If you want to be a writer, write. Write and write and write. If you stop, start again. Save everything that you write. If you feel blocked, write through it until you feel your creative juices flowing again. Write. Writing is what makes a writer, nothing more and nothing less. — Ignore critics. Critics are a dime a dozen. Anybody can be a critic. Writers are priceless. — Go where the pleasure is in your writing. Go where the pain is. Write the book you would like to read. Write the book you have been trying to find but have not found. But write. And remember, there are no rules for our profession. Ignore rules. Ignore what I say here if it doesn’t help you. Do it your own way. — Every writer knows fear and discouragement. Just write. — The world is crying for new writing. It is crying for fresh and original voices and new characters and new stories. If you won’t write the classics of tomorrow, well, we will not have any. Good luck.
Anne Rice
Half the urge to write is the premonition that later the thought I am having might disappear so I had better write it down while I still have the inclination, however overshadowed this desire is by indolence.
Wayne Koestenbaum
And how long would the life in me stay alive if it did not find new roots?I behaved like a starving man who knows there is foot somewhere if he can only find it. I did not reason anything out. I did not reason that part of the food I needed was to become a member of a community richer and more various, humanly speaking, than the academic world of Cambridge could provide: the hunger of the novelist. I did not reason that part of the nourishment I craved was all the natural world can give - a garden, woods, fields, brooks, birds: the hunger of the poet. I did not reason that the time had come when I needed a house of my own, a nest of my own making: the hunger of the woman.
May Sarton
And how long would the life in me stay alive if it did not find new roots?I behaved like a starving man who knows there is food somewhere if he can only find it. I did not reason anything out. I did not reason that part of the food I needed was to become a member of a community richer and more various, humanly speaking, than the academic world of Cambridge could provide: the hunger of the novelist. I did not reason that part of the nourishment I craved was all the natural world can give - a garden, woods, fields, brooks, birds: the hunger of the poet. I did not reason that the time had come when I needed a house of my own, a nest of my own making: the hunger of the woman.
May Sarton
What a lover of words and their beauty discovers. . .is that there is literally a word for every object, material or immaterial, every relation, and every process that human beings have experienced. Because that is what words are: the crystallization in language of thousands of years of experience across numerous cultures and civilizations, each word being the most tangible flesh in which thought is tabernacled.
Charles Johnson
Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.
Gustave Flaubert
The first thing you have to learn when you go into the arts is to learn to cope with rejection. If you can’t, you’re dead
Warren Adler
... I am with fire between my teeth and still nothing but my blank page.
Monique Wittig
Walter Parmenter sometimes seemed to his daughter a restless subterranean force held together by rituals.
Anne Rivers Siddons
The art of biography is more difficult than is generally supposed.
Thornton Wilder
He said, it's rather like your voice. You put up with your voice and speak with it because you haven't any choice. But it's what you say that counts. It's what distinguishes all great art from the other kind.
John Fowles
I do not like these painted faces that look all alike; and I think women are foolish to dull their expression and obscure their personality with powder, rouge, and lipstick.
W Somerset Maugham
I was at a loss suddenly; but conscious all the while of how Armand listened; that he listened in the way that we dream of others listening, his face seeming to reflect on every thing said. He did not start forward to seize on my slightest pause, to assert an understanding of something before the thought was finished, or to argue with a swift, irresistible impulse -- the things which often make dialogue impossible.And after a long interval he said, 'I want you. I want you more than anything in the world.
Anne Rice
In the closeness of the passage, the queen could smell the other woman's perfume, a musky scent that spoke of moss and earth and wildflowers. Under it, she smelled ambition.
George R.R. Martin
It never occurs to her that she will not be a writer and only occasionally does it occur to her, depressingly, that she is going to grow into a woman, not a man.
Jean Stafford