American Novelist Quotes

The most truly generous persons are those who give silently without hope of praise or reward.

Carol Ryrie Brink

Racism doesn't know color, death doesn't know age, and pain doesn't know might.

Jacqueline Woodson

Three times I have been mistaken for a prohibition agent, but never had any trouble clearing myself.

Dashiell Hammett

There is a secret society of seven men that controls the finances of the world. This is known to everyone but the details are not known. There are some who believe that it would be better if one of those seven men were a financier.

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

Oppression is never right, even when it is elegant.

Time is really nothing but a huge circle. You divide a circle of three hundred and sixty degrees into twenty-four hours, and you get fifteen degrees of arc that is the equivalent of each hour.

Erle Stanley Gardner

That horrible moment of suspense when the artist shows one of his creations to strange eyes for the first time.

Nobody gets everything in this life. You decide your priorities and you make your choices. I'd decided long ago that any cake I had would be eaten.

Donald E. Westlake

We are in the middle of what looks increasingly like the zombie apocalypse. Moaning people don't need help. Moaning people are intending to eat us.

The nurse knocked softly on the door of the examining room and wheeled in a shiny silver tray displaying neatly arranged instruments of torture.

Jennifer Echols

I shared this insight with some other boat owners, and they all agreed that, definitely, putting your boar into the water is asking for trouble. Most of them have had their boats sitting in their driveways long enough to be registered historical landmarks.

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

By 1899, we had learned to tame the darkness but not the Texas heat.

Jacqueline Kelly

When characters have different goals and are intent on achieving them, conflict results. If the stakes are high and both sides are unyielding, you have the makings of high drama.

Art is the most terrifying of human inventions — it preserves the right to undermine all categories.

If there were a mile high mountain of granite, and once every ten-thousand years a bird flew past and brushed it with a feather, by the time that mountain was worn away, a fraction of a second would have passed in the context of eternity

Now each one of us, black or white, is a symbol. The war is out in the open and the skin color is a uniform. All the deep and basic similarities of the human condition are forgotten so that we can exaggerate the few differences that exist.

John D. MacDonald

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.

When you get down to the bottom of it, only about half of what we remember really happened. We tend to modify things to make ourselves look better in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. Then, if what we did wasn't really very admirable, we tend to forget that it ever happened. A normal human being's grasp on reality is very tenuous at best. Our imaginary lives are usually much nicer.

Customers are ninjas now. They are stealthily evaluating you right under your nose.

The easy road is always under construction,so have an alternate route planned.

Everything wrong I've ever done has always seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

Judith McNaught

I, myself, often wished to be spared the expectation of better days ahead or such.

Daniel Woodrell

It's toys, boy, all toys. You'll see more and more contraptions as you get older, but if I teach you anything, you'll learn that all of this is decoration. What counts is what's inside you and what you can see in others.

Stefan Petrucha