20th-century Novelist Quotes

Every death diminishes us, but those that leave differences unresolved and things unsaid are the most painful of all.

People think they have to be good before they can act good. But... it works just as well the other way 'round.

One's words must glide across the page like a swan moving across the waters. One must be conscious of the movement without a thought of what is causing it to move.

We can't continue to be like this. Who am I? Your fiancée or your concubine?

We have to learn to be our own best friends because we fall too easily into the trap of being our own worst enemies.

The Florida peninsula is, in fact, an emerging plateau, honeycombed with voids and vents, caves and underground waterways. Travelers on Interstate Highway I-75 have no idea that, beneath them, are cave labyrinths still being mapped by speleologists - 'cavers,' they prefer to be called.

Things can never be as they were. It's astonishing how we comment on change, as if change is something remarkable. On the contrary, not to change is unnatural, against nature.

From where we stand the rain seems random. If we could stand somewhere else, we would see the order in it.

Tony Hillerman
Tony Hillerman
It takes strength to be proud of yourself and to accept yourself when you know that you have something out of the ordinary about you.

"… the National Football League needs "a guardian, not a CEO" to deal with the fact that "the sport is simply more and more identified with violence, both in its inherent nature and in its savage personnel."

Frank Deford
Frank Deford
When someone is always looking over their shoulder, they're more likely to trip.

James Rollins
James Rollins
Mostly though, they waited. For the mail. For the news. For the bells. For breakfast and lunch and dinner. For one day to be over and the next day to begin.

A journalist who has to borrow a typewriter is bad news.

Why didn't children ever see that they could damage and harm their parents as much as parents could damage and harm children?

Nature's what it's all about, but our people have been brainwashed into thinking that life is a cell phone against your head and the TV on a beer commercial with hot chicks.

Men and women will forever make gods of others rather than see the god in themselves.

Evil exists in us all, Torak. Some fight it. Some feed it. That's how it's always been.

Michelle Paver
Michelle Paver
People only know what you tell them.And it was true.People gave out their whole life stories to anyone and everyone without a second's thought.Stand at a bus stop, sit in a strange pub, get banged up, and someone would always give you their life story.It was as if they were trying to prove they existed

It is not simply what one remembers, but why. There are sites of amputation where the past is severed from the body of the present. Remembering only encourages the growth of phantom limbs. And it is not simply what one remembers, or why, but what to do with what one remembers, which of the scattered pieces to carry forward, what to protect and preserve, what to leave behind.

Ainsley walked round him, shivering and rubbing his nose. The nose felt that it was running, or felt that it didn't feel it was running when it was

To all the guys who broke our hearts - we wouldn't appreciate what we have today without you.

Still, even without the country or a lake, the summer was a fine thing, particularly when you were at the beginning of it, looking ahead into it. There would be months of beautifully long, empty days, and each other to play with, and the books from the library.

Walt loved technology. He didn't understand it half the time, but the beauty of good technology was that he didn't have to understand it. Just use it.

Ridley Pearson
Ridley Pearson
If snow melts down to water, does it still remember being snow?

To be haunted is to glimpse a truth that might best be hidden.