Novel Quotes

I was angry at myself for my inclination to vice. I longed for the day when a state of frenzy would lead my mind to sober pasture, just as it had for Saint Augustine. I longed for the day when the love of one woman would be sacred enough to forget all the rest.

Roman Payne

A girl without braidsis like a city without bridges.

Roman Payne

Two questions form the foundation of all novels: "What if?" and "What next?" (A third question, "What now?", is one the author asks himself every 10 minutes or so; but it's more a cry than a question.) Every novel begins with the speculative question, What if "X" happened? That's how you start.

Tom Clancy

Although they are often called cabarets, and occasionally there is even strip-dancing involved, you shouldn't associate them with merrymaking or extravaganza...

Lola Smirnova

When the going gets tough, the tough gets going.

William Boyd

Publishers, readers, booksellers, even critics, acclaim the novel that one can deliciously sink into, forget oneself in, the novel that returns us to the innocence of childhood or the dream of the cartoon, the novel of a thousand confections and no unwanted significance. What becomes harder to find, and lonelier to defend, is the idea of the novel as—in Ford Madox Ford’s words—a “medium of profoundly serious investigation into the human case.

James Wood

With the right tools, you can write anything ...

Jeff Lyons

The people inside were in intense worship; it seemed to Sarah like they were in another world or something. The pleasantness in the atmosphere drew her in. She felt welcomed, even though she had not been invited; noticed, even though she had not been seen; loved, even though she wasn’t known; and even though it didn’t make sense to her—it didn’t have to.

Calvin W. Allison

His voice was reassuring and calm, his expression soft, his eyes brighter than ever. Oh Ahura Mazda, she’d never wanted any man so intently in all her life. She ached to have him touch her, kiss her, taste her. And Ivar did as she wished. He put her hand to his nose to smell her skin, kissed her inner wrist to taste her, his lips lingered over her racing pulse. Finally, it was confirmed in actions and direct words, spoken aloud and repeated seven times… She felt the rush of desire ripping through her body, an intense sensation of warmth upon her skin, the blissful waves of uneasiness swamped through her, tingling her nerves.

Widad Akreyi

A moment later, Vesta became aware that her life was passing her by in that busy city, where no man could capture her heart… What if she married someone, who wasn’t mentally prepared to keep his Zoroastrian identity intact? Or what if her future husband was forced to convert to Islam? What if he tried to force her to convert as well? What if he suddenly decided to become an extremist and called for Sharia Laws in Kurdland? She shivered at the thought.

Widad Akreyi

In the presence of Esch, values have hidden their faces. Order, loyalty, sacrifice—he cherishes all these words, but exactly what do they represent? Sacrifice for what? Demand what sort of order? He doesn't know.If a value has lost its concrete content, what is left of it? A mere empty form; an imperative that goes unheeded and, all the more furious, demands to be heard and obeyed. The less Esch knows what he wants, the more furiously he wants it. Esch: the fanaticism of the era with no God. Because all values have hidden their faces, anything can be considered a value. Justice, order—Esch seeks them now in the trade union struggle, then in religion; today in police power, tomorrow in the mirage of America, where he dreams of emigrating. He could be a terrorist or a repentant terrorist turning in his comrades, or a party militant or a cult member a kamikaze prepared to sacrifice his life. All the passions rampaging through the bloody history of our time are taken up, unmasked, and terrifyingly displayed in Esch's modest adventure.

Milan Kundera

When the evening was over, Anne could not but be amused at the idea of her coming to Lyme, to preach patience and resignation to a young man whom she had never seen before; nor could she help fearing, on more serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.

Jane Austen

The men were smashing windows and aiming their weapons through them. The driver had opened the door and was shouting for the women and children to get out and run and hide. But Ilina realized in some vague way that he never managed to actually say the word "hide." He really said, "Women and children, get out, get out, get out! Run and..." The clerk's wife thought it was odd that he had stopped in the middle of a sentence, and even stranger that she herself knew the word, heard the word "hide" in her head when the driver stopped talking.

Clark Zlotchew

I felt a lunatic’s laugh welling up inside me.

Steven Ramirez

I heard them tearing at it. It was the sound of mortality.

Steven Ramirez

You shouldn’t have done that, Dave.

Steven Ramirez

This place is Hell’s waiting room.

Steven Ramirez

I like to think she hates my guts a little less every hour.

Steven Ramirez

One day someone is going to read my autobiography and say “Wow, what a horror novel

M.F. Moonzajer

I had never had a big opinion for myself. I had always thought I'd be a fuck up, that I'd be disappointed like always by life and people. But at this very moment, I knew it. I wasn't a good man, not well-adjusted. —Nolan

Stephanie Witter

It feels like someone is gripping my heart and twisting it. It feels like I can't breathe. I shut my eyes tightly against the memory that is threatening to surface. I can't br

Ashley Earley

If I am going to be a monster, the least I could do is be well fed!

Cristina M. Sburlea

If this were a proper world, beautiful faces would belong to beautiful people. Good people with kind hearts and clever minds would always have bright eyes and dazzling smiles, and bad people would have scraggly hair and warty noses. That way if you saw one of them coming, you could cross to the other side of the street and avoid them altogether. But this is not a proper world. In our world, many bad people look quite nice, and many good people are not beautiful at all. Many good people aren't pretty or cute or even interesting-looking.

Brit Trogen

She said, 'It is filled with all the words for how I want you.

Sarah Waters

Knowing, above all, that I would come looking, and find what he had left for me, all that remained of The Jungle Book in the pocket of his doctor’s coat, that folder-up, yellowed page torn from the back of the book, with a bristle of thick, coarse hairs clenced inside. Galina, says my grandfather’s handwriting, above and below a child’s drawing of the tiger, who is curved like the blade of a scimitar across the page. Galina, it says, and that is how I know to find him again, in Galina, in the story he hadn’t told me but perhaps wished he had.

Téa Obreht

But it was not only a feeling of guilt which drove him into danger. He detested the pettiness that made life semilife and men semimen. He wished to put his life on one of a pair of scales and death on the other. He wished each of his acts, indeed each day, each hour, each second of his life to be measured against the supreme criterion, which is death. That was why he wanted to march at the head of the column, to walk on a tightrope over an abyss, to have a halo of bullets around his head and thus to grow in everyone's eyes and become unlimited as death is unlimited. . .

Milan Kundera

As with all new inventions, there are upsides and downsides. The commercial drone is no exception. But until robust safeguards have been introduced to protect personal privacy from prying eyes in the skies, the true benefits to society of unmanned aerial vehicles will remain unrealised.

Alex Morritt

Its magnificence was indescribable, and its magnitude was inconceivable. She felt overwhelmed in the presence of its greatness. Pg 87

Mona Rodriguez

Confession is good for the soul even after the soul has been claimed” (p. 381).

Mona Rodriguez

When you think about the period in which Agatha Christie's crime novels were written, they are actually quite edgy for the time.

Sara Sheridan

You two are bound to one another. You always have been … and you can't run away from what you are. No matter where you go, your feelings for her are going to follow you.

Mirella Muffarotto

I tried to hate you, to forgive you, all just to forget you, but I'm only capable of loving you. You're tattooed onto my skin, and the more I try to erase you, the deeper you sink in.

Mirella Muffarotto

I think it all basically breaks down to something like this: You have to look and feel great first. If you eat well, exercise and get enough sleep, you will have ample energy and the proper self-confidence to create and produce beyond your wildest dreams! Looking great and radiating positive energy, while presenting your highest quality work, is what will always make you the most valuable and only logical choice in whatever it is that you reach for.

Jennifer Elisabeth

It's absurd how crazy love can make you......but even more absurd how stupid jealousy can make you!

Mirella Muffarotto

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

Once you break someone’s heart, you are forever its master.

Roy L. Pickering Jr.

It was almost as if she had willed him into existence, into standing before her at the precise moment she was willing to accommodate him, arriving not a minute too early or too late.

Roy L. Pickering Jr.

The new day is almost here, but the old one is still dragging its heavy skirts. Just as ocean water and river water struggle against each other at a river mouth, the old time and the new time clash and blend.

Haruki Murakami

Ah, yeah. Yeah, tis awful all right. Well, your Mam wanted me to talk to you about it, but…’He stopped; he didn’t know what else to say.‘Yeah? Ah, I know the score, Dad. She wants me to be careful, is it?’‘Ah, no. Well, yeah; there’s that, of course. No, she wanted… well, if you’d any questions, youknow?’ I wasn’t sure if he wanted me to say yes, or if he just wanted me to say no, and save himhaving to be awkward. He looked lost. I felt like I wanted to save him‘No, I’ve no questions, Dad. It’s all right, shur.’ He looked at me then. His eyes went wet, likehe was going to start bawling. If we were in a film, he might have hugged me. But we were inLimerick, so he just said:‘Well, so,’ and put his one glove back on.From The Boys of Summer

Ciarán West

Sexual frenzy is our compensation for the tedious moments we must suffer in the passage of life. 'Nothing in excess,' professed the ancient Greeks. Why if I spend half the month in healthy scholarship and pleasant sleep, shouldn't I be allowed the other half to howl at the moon and pillage the groins of Europe's great beauties?

Roman Payne

Nothing good in this world comes free! For everything there’s a payment of time or money or soul!

Kellyn Roth

Without needing told, without Jacob's lead, Akando dropped to his knees and lunged into the throne room of Christ.

Willowy Whisper

Cursed the crown that brought such grief to me

J. Leigh Bralick

There are times when the unseen can be even more dangerous than what our eyes behold.

Erin Forbes

Pull back the curtain and jump down the rabbit hole.

Brad Jensen

Fall into the cavern of my mind, and together there, we will dine.

Brad Jensen

Their message will never be decoded, not only because there is no key to it, but also because people have no patience to listen to it in an age when the accumulation of messages old and new is such that their voices cancel one another out. Today history is no more than a thin thread of the remembered stretching over an ocean of the forgotten, but time moves on, and an epoch of millennia will come which the inextensible memory of the individual will be unable to encompass; whole centuries and millennia will therefore fall away, centuries of painting and music, centuries of discoveries, of battles, of books, and this will be dire, because man will lose the notion of his self, and his history, unfathomable, unencompassable, will shrivel into a few schematic signs destitute of all sense.

Milan Kundera

I glare at him and sigh. “Don't you understand what a book is?”“Obviously.”“Then how can it be boring? It's not just twenty-six little letters all mushed together to make words that link together to tell a story. It's the creation of another world where anything can happen and anyone can be whoever they want to be. It's a crazy, special kind of magic that can transport you out of the real world, to anywhere you want to go. It doesn't matter if it's a made-up universe or it's written in a city you can drive to within an hour. It's what happens within the pages that makes reading so...not boring.”-Emma Hart "Dirty Little Rendezvous (The Burke Brothers Spin-Off #1).

Emma Hart

Millions cheer the warriorspilling blood across the ringwhile the one who stands for peaceis ridiculed and shamed.Must hearts forever sufferfrom ignorance and greed?Can bombs heal our soulsor set our spirits free?

Aberjhani

Michelle, since the first day I met you I knew you were the one for me. I knew that I would make you my wife. I love waking up to your beautiful face every morning and seeing you before I close my eyes each night. I love you with everything in me, and I promise to be the man that you need for the rest of our lifetime together. Would you do me the honor of being my wife?

Blaque Diamond

Know the word of God not in order that by doing so you might be saved; know it rather so that unlike the many you are not easily deceived. You may find that, evidently, a great many of the so-called novel ideas of the present were made without a clue that 'God', if you will, already laid profound discourse on or against them ages ago: no man has gone against God in such a way that God, from the beginning, did not already expect him to. Then, insofar as this, you will remain clear in that it is not at all that the Christian should be against newness; quite the opposite really - for a major point of Christianity is about one constantly being made new in Christ - it is only that many people are not actually bringing true newness to the table, and this is precisely because they do not first apply (or let alone even know) the wisdom of old.

Criss Jami

It is usually unbearably painful to read a book by an author who knows way less than you do, unless the book is a novel.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Every novel which is truly written contributes to the total of knowledge which is there at the disposal of the next writer who comes, but the next writer must pay, always, a certain nominal percentage in experience to be able to understand and assimilate what is available as his birthright and what he must, in turn, take his departure from. If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. A writer who appreciates the seriousness of writing so little that he is anxious to make people see he is formally educated, cultured or well-bred is merely a popinjay. And this too remember; a serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

Ernest Hemingway

Novelists when they write novels tend to take an almost godlike attitude toward their subject, pretending to a total comprehension of the story, a man's life, which they can therefore recount as God Himself might, nothing standing between them and the naked truth, the entire story meaningful in every detail. I am as little able to do this as the novelist is, even though my story is more important to me than any novelist's is to him - for this is my story; it is the story of a man, not of an invented, or possible, or idealized, or otherwise absent figure, but of a unique being of flesh and blood, Yet, what a real living human being is made of seems to be less understood today than at any time before, and men - each one of whom represents a unique and valuable experiment on the part of nature - are therefore shot wholesale nowadays. If we were not something more than unique human beings, if each one of us could really be done away with once and for all by a single bullet, storytelling would lose all purpose. But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of every consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross.

Hermann Hesse

This is your life – not your parents’, teachers’ or significant other’s. If you ever find yourself on a path that just doesn’t feel safe anymore, you have every right to stop the car, get out – change your shoes and start walking.

Jennifer Elisabeth

Starting over can be the scariest thing in the entire world, whether it’s leaving a lover, a school, a team, a friend or anything else that feels like a core part of our identity but when your gut is telling you that something here isn’t right or feels unsafe, I really want you to listen and trust in that voice.

Jennifer Elisabeth

Any self-defense class worth its salt will tell you thatyou don’t pull out a weapon unless you intend to use it.The same should apply to ballsy remarks.

Henry Mosquera

[novan]: bassists are very good with their fingers[novan]: and some of us sing backup vocals, so that means we're good with our mouths too...(~ IM chat with Novan Chang, 18, bassist)

Jess C. Scott

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