Fiction Quotes - Page 23

Jamin knew that by morning, when he was done paying the girl in exchange for her slipping out without causing a fuss, he would be flat broke. But that did not matter. It was money well spent.

Stanley Gazemba (Bahati Books)

I am convinced that if stories such as these have any lasting value, it is in revealing the kind of work young pulp-writers were doing in those days when rates were low and one had to make a typewriter smoke in order to keep eating.

Hugh B. Cave

The carcass was still warm - barely a few minutes dead, with the blood clotting on the ugly wound on its head where Pinchez had bashed it in with a brick.

Stanley Gazemba (Bahati Books)

every man has his own story, his own agony("The Watcher O' The Dead")

John Guinan

There is no man but carries in his breast the makings of a story, which, though never told, comes more home to him, than any the mind of another man can find and fashion in words("The Watcher O' The Dead")

John Guinan

What has been his cause for searching the heavens day and night, for testing the limit of his reach hour by hour like a man trapped inside an expanding balloon? The reasons were as various as the days they consumed: to grasp the workings of the universe, to find something more beyond earth’s fretful compass, to put his name to a discovery and secure fame’s immortality, to be able to point to a map and proclaim simply: here I am.

John Pipkin

Her calculations have always held the utmost accuracy, but mathematics alone will not be enough to guide her; she must learn to trust in chance and, if need be, in accident.

John Pipkin

Each new scientific fact gives rise to new uncertainties, and every pattern of starlight holds both a record and a prophecy.

John Pipkin

The heavens are too immense, too beautiful and varied, to fit into the mind of any one deity; the murmured creeds of fathers and sons are no match for the astronomer’s gasp.

John Pipkin

Nothing in heaven or earth is content to be alone, and so there must always be something more. The universe is governed by a principle no more complicated than this: that a solitary body will forever attract another to itself.

John Pipkin

It is one of the great blessings of youth, this guiltlessness, the source of gentle sleep and peaceful days.

John Pipkin

Wisdom tolerates blustered opinions, the better to dismiss them later with discovery.

John Pipkin

It is only the sudden and unpredictable appearance of comets that spoils the immutable celestial sphere.

John Pipkin

The basis of English law is as simple as this: If you would know the future’s shape, look to the past.

John Pipkin

Is this not the very thing that drives an adventurous man to navigate uncharted oceans, to traverse continents and mountains, to pilot virgin estuaries and hidden coves—this promise of inscribing a name steadfast upon what he finds? There are few parcels of earth left to be claimed; yet even as the known world shrinks, the heavens grow ever more infinite. An explorer of the skies need never leave his home or fret over the swiftness of other expeditions; he might give whatever name he chooses to any new thing that wanders into his view.

John Pipkin

But if watching the sky is to be his duty, how should he begin? Now and then he has spotted one of the five bright planets or recognized a constellation, but he knows little about the turning of the heavens. When he contemplates the great distances between this and that, and the vast multitude of solitary objects spread over the celestial dome, he cannot fathom how one goes about searching for what is yet unknown.

John Pipkin

In almost all other professions a man must be able to observe carefully and report accurately what he has seen. Those qualifications are unnecessary for journalists, however, since their job is to write sensational stories that sell newspapers.

Robert Anton Wilson

I want to confess. I thought that her story was comprised of scenes. I thought the tragedy could be glamorous and her grief could be undone by a sunnier future. I thought we could pinpoint dramatic events on a time line and call it a life.But I was wrong.

Nina LaCour

As insane as his request sounded to her, the fact that he already saw her nakedness the day before made her calm down a little. “He even covered my nakedness and gifted me with a beautiful dress,” she thought to herself. He held her hand and led her to the Nile river’s shore. He let go and stood back watching her.

Mirette Baghat

The same ratios that govern music give laws to optics and to the movement of the heavens as well. Simple. Elegant. Predictable.

John Pipkin

...but at night when he turns the awkward [telescope] skyward, he catches his breath at the clarity of the image and the vast populations of stars unknown to him until then, the riotous glittering in the dark crevices between constellations, a convocation of bright spirits waiting to be found.

John Pipkin

Sketches of mad skies spilling stars caught in spiraling gyres, diagrams for constructing sextants tall as a man and armillary spheres to mimic the motion of the cosmos. He decides that he must have all of it, that he will cram the little observatory with maps and charts, clocks and compasses, and instruments for bringing the sky nearer.

John Pipkin

As the eclipse progresses, a confusion of chattering birds sweeps low in search of dusk and their shadows skip over the water’s surface and it makes perfect sense that these small creatures should be so moved by events beyond their reckoning.

John Pipkin

Christopher's heart bled that night and he could not sleep. Deborah who used to call him numerous times in a day and send countless messages was now not answering his calls. And she never called him.

Ayibu Makolo

So we will cover every possibility. We will take turns at the telescope. I will keep watch in the day, and at night you will take my place, and together we will see to it that no part of the sky goes unobserved.

John Pipkin

Convention itself, like metaphor itself, is not dead; but it is always dying.

James Wood

Alexier found that a dose of humility did wonders to one’s ability to grasp new ideas and, after all, it had been this very ability that made him the researcher he was today.

I. H. Richardson

Nick got home the first week in December, to find New York still wallowing in its post-Armistice euphoria. Service men were celebrities wherever they went, and nothing was too good for them-especially the ones who were wounded-until it came down to such practical matters as finding housing or a job...It too him awhile to come to the conclusion that all the talk about help for veterans was just that, and anything that was done for him would have to be done by himself.

Nathaniel Benchley

This is a work of fiction, and the people in it are fictitious. The ghosts are real.

Nathaniel Benchley

Why do you think movies and fiction authors invent vampires, lottery winners, and soulmates? I'll tell you why: because watching someone brush their teeth, shop for sandwich meat, and change the toilet paper roll is as mind-numbing for the observer as it is for the observed. Problem is, we live the toilet paper life, not the vampire life.'....'But we expect the vampires.

Ann Wertz Garvin

The problem was not an issue of availability because there were African girls everywhere. Christopher met them in church, in bars and in the cafeteria on the ground floor of the Sir Duncan Rice library.

Ayibu Makolo

He tracks the rise and fall of the glittering darkness thronged with specks and tendrils of luminous secrets. Falling stars crackle in the cold air and prickle his skin. They flash in the corner of his vision where the eye’s discernment of light and shadow is most acute.

John Pipkin

If your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours.

J. Sheridan Le Fanu

A story is a wedding in which we listeners are the groom watching the bride coming up the aisle. It is together, in an act of imaginary consummation, that the story is born. This act wholly involves us, as any marriage would, and just as no marriage is exactly the same as another, so each of us interprets a story differently, feels for it differently. A story calls upon us...as individuals-and we like that. Stories benefit the human mind.

Yann Martel

She was like a fire-cracker standing too close to a match: all potential energy, still wrapped up so neatly. He wanted to watch her explode. Hell, he was the match. He wanted to make her explode.

Christina Lauren

You know this has really affected my ability to trust myself. No matter what happened in my life, I was always able to trust myself. My instincts. Two men in a row carrying on indiscretions makes me feel like I made up some story. Almost like a fiction, Iwrote in my mind that had a beginning, middle and end. It feels like I manufactured some ideal life that was a made-up invention that I needed to believe was the truth.

Jacqueline Simon Gunn

Instead, I read books in the library, huddling on a bean bag in a corner and getting lost in somebody else's victories and troubles. I never had much time for fiction before. I preferred real life. Mathematics. Solutions. Things that actually have a bearing on my life. But I can understand now why people read, why they like to get lost in somebody else's life. Sometimes I'll read a sentence and it will make me sit up, jolt me, because it is something that I have recently felt but never said out loud. I want to reach into the page and tell the characters that I understand them, that they are not alone, that I'm not alone, that it's okay to feel like this. And then the lunch bell rings the book closes and I'm plunged back into reality.

Cecelia Ahern

The feeling, all encompassing, safe and warm like a blanket permanently draped over her shoulders, follows her around. She takes it into the shower, to meals with her mother and sister, to work as she reads out the news script, her voice never faltering.

Zainab Omaki

I knew when I got into self-publishing I would have to compete with other authors' words. I did not, however, know that I was going to have to compete with so many sculpted abs!

Matthew Culberson

I have been loved said Edward to the stars.

Kate DiCamillo

There will be no holding off, there will be no remorse and there will be no hesitation. They will die and they will die a horrible death. This is my pledge and vow, so bank on it and don’t try to stop me.

Mark A. McCormick

To be alive, to be man alive, to be whole man alive: that is the point. And at its best, the novel, and the novel supremely, can help you. It can help you not to be dead man in life.

D.H. Lawrence

I always win.

Brittany Noel Bostic

Real life was curious enough without the embellishments of fiction.

John Connolly

I wake up and look at that bridge, try to count the red taillights I see heading east every morning, a kind of rosary as I pray for another crisis to dwarf the one defining us right now.

K.I. Hope

The sea is rushing in now as unconsciousness does.I can see a chord, hear gospel songs as we hoist the sails.The sails are a soft white bird. We are airborne. We are primitive.

Suzy Davies

It was important to tell people. To let people know that this can happen. Your child's body can stop. Stop breathing, stop beating.

Sarah Moss

The quiet brings to mind the multitude of men and women living out their days in solitude—each convinced that their fears and wants are unique to themselves—and she longs to press herself into their fold and be counted among those whose lives are meshed with the turning of the world.

John Pipkin

God isn't going to scribble across the sky. "The shark is gone.

Peter Benchley

The first time Kiya met Hapi was over a year ago. On that day, she was at the temple - not to sell pigeons and bread as usual, but to pray and offer sacrifices on the altar of Horus - the God of protection.

Mirette Baghat

He knelt down beside her and slowly rubbed a soft, muculent mix on her bare skin like a sculptor at work. It carried the pleasurable smell of wet earth. With his fingertips, he gently stroked every part of her body; and with every stroke, she groaned softly. She felt the pain that filled every bone in her body, yet she also felt the immense sensation of pleasure and comfort that was so foreign to her

Mirette Baghat

The small Chinese man sank onto the plush leather sofa. He sank so low on the large brown sofa, it looked like it would swallow him whole. He sat, clutching his briefcase close to his chest, his alert eyes scanning the spacious room. Opposite him, across a glass table sat a large African Minister in a freshly pressed Italian suit.

Marko Phiri

Yet Nathan appreciated being alone as he sipped his cold glass of beer. It gave him time to think. In the next thirty minutes or so, the flight he was waiting for would land and his day would begin. It was autumn in the capital, and the clear skies created an illusion of a city that was at peace with itself.

Marko Phiri

As Zhao ducked, he sneaked a blow aimed at Homwe’s stomach. Homwe groaned in surprise and confusion – shocked at his opponent’s speed and strength. He quickly drew a handgun from under his jacket and hit Xi Zhao on the head, drawing blood from his skull.

Marko Phiri

I'll tell you a story about Johnny Magory!

Emma-Jane Leeson

Here the sky is wrapped in silk. The breathings of so many men and animals, and the smoke of your coal, and the fog, oh, it is too much. The Paris sky is perfect. A man must see clearly, to see something new.

John Pipkin

Sometimes he counts himself to sleep by imagining the miles between stars like the succession of footsteps cleaving him from his home, as if mastering the distance in thought might blunt the separation. But if a man cannot return to the place of his birth, then what is there to stay his restless feet? What center will hold him from wandering endlessly? It should not be so difficult, he thinks, to know one’s place in the order of things.

John Pipkin

Time lost to pointless delay can never be regained. It is the most reprehensible kind of theft. Why was it that men did not grasp this simple fact? Money comes and goes and comes again, and knowledge can be acquired and forgotten and rediscovered, but time once lost is lost for good, each passing second irretrievable.

John Pipkin

Violet smiled up at Nikolai. "I'm so very glad you came to Riversleigh."Nikolai looked serious as he thought for a moment. "You know what, myshka? I'm very glad too. The old world and the old ways are dying. I think the new world and the new ways are filled with endless possibilities.

Belinda Murrell

If you are writing fiction, think like a god. Release all the power of your imagination; create worlds and destroy them at your will, create as many miracles as your story needs

Bangambiki Habyarimana

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Fiction Quotes - Page 23

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