American Novelist Quotes

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Henry James

Pearl S. Buck

Nathaniel Hawthorne

J. D. Salinger

Sylvia Plath

Toni Morrison

The story of civilization is, in a sense, the story of engineering-that long and arduous struggle to make the forces of nature work for man's good.

L. Sprague de Camp

I have fallen in love with American names,
The sharp, gaunt names that never get fat,
The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims,
The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat,
Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat.

Stephen Vincent Benét

If you're a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he's good, the older he gets, the better he writes.

Mickey Spillane

Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Expecting to be able to get rid of the competitive drive, first of all, flies in the face of human nature — and little girls certainly have this drive, as much as little boys do, or at least the little girls I have observed in my immediate family have it.

I thought that when they said Atlantic Charter, that meant me and everybody in Africa and Asia and everywhere. But it seems like the Atlantic is an ocean that does not touch anywhere but North America and Europe.

Zora Neale Hurston

That's what you realized when you got older. When you were little, you thought you were just too young to understand the answers and that when you got older things would come into focus. Then you had to finally face the truth: There were no answers.

Cam's wings were so bright they were almost blinding as they pulsed. "Holy Hell," Callie whispered, blinking."More or less," Arriane said

I wonder if Eve could write letters in Paradise! But, poor Eve, she had no one to write to - no one to whom to tell what Eden was, no beloved child to whom her love traveled through any or all space. Poor Eve!

Catharine Sedgwick

Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created.

It just goes to show that what one person considers a "bad attitude" might actually just be total frustration over being pushed beyond the brink of one's mental and physical endurance.

Do not the auburn-haired gain a new sense of freedom as a blonde (see Miss Clairol)? Who can deny the madness of a redesigned nose (see Miami Beach)? Yes, indeed. A wild excitement engulfed me. My mirrored image reflected, in an occult fashion, a magnificent future.... The texture of my hair had changed.

Charles Stevenson Wright

You can't expect people to give you the things you love, unless you know how to ask.

Genevieve Valentine

So this is one of those times when life is just handing you something, telling you what to do, which way to go. So enjoy it. It'll be fun. I guarantee. I can't guarantee we'll find the goddamn thing, but it'll be interesting. Then if we do find it - if we do- the payoff's huge.

Love is a state of the heart, but also, an activity. And quite an awesome one.

My writing about Cuba [is] more like an act of creation. Whatever my Cuba is about, it's my own version. I'm not a cultural anthropologist.

Justice requires lawyers who are prepared, witnesses who tell the truth, judges who know the law, and jurors who stay awake. Justice is the North Star, the burning bush, the holy virgin. It cannot be bought, sold, or mass produced. It is intangible, ineffable, and invisible, but if you are to spend your life in its pursuit, it is best to believe it exists, and that you can attain it.

It takes more than Love and Passion to make a relationship work

Christie Ridgway

Then on your tombstone, where you only get a little bit of space to sum up your life, some wax-faced creep chisels a set of meaningless numbers instead of poetry or a secret love or the name of your favorite candy. In the end, all you get is a few words.

Scott Nicholson

Philip says to fear me. Do you have any idea how afraid I am of him?

Linnea Sinclair

You don't feel like smiling? Then what? Force yourself to smile. Act as if you were already happy, and that will tend to make you happy.

If it's easy to be friendly she will be. If the wind blows the other way her friendship will be gone. And I'm thinking the wind is blowing the other way. She has found some other way to be an important person in her own right by hating others.

Charlaine Harris

Nothing is ever simple. What do you do when you discover you like parts of the role you're trying to escape?

Let me tell you, people go on and on about what a great idea electricity was, but I'm going to put toilet paper right next to the wheel and say those are the best ideas anyone's ever had. Scoff at it if you will, but try living for two millennia without it and then we'll talk.

Don't compliment me in the middle of an argument. It won't make me stammer or blush, and it just makes you look desperate.