American Novelist Quotes

An author never has a vacation. He's a walking sponge, sopping up impressions till he's saturated, then going to his desk and squeezing them out on paper.

Ben Ames Williams

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.

Take one of my favourite experiments, for example. I see a little ball rattling around in a wheel. Where will that ball stop? You, being less intellectual than I, don't care where it stops I do. Instantly my scientific curiosity is aroused; I reason logically; I evolve an opinion; I back that opinion; and I remain busy and poor.

Robert W. Chambers

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

We used to all come outside when the streetlights came on and prowl the neighborhood in a pack, a herd of kids on banana-seat bikes and minibikes. The grown-ups looked so silly framed in their living-room and kitchen windows. They complained about their days and signed deep sighs of depression and loss. They talked about how spoiled and lucky children were these days. We will never be that way, we said, we will never say those things.

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.

Don't seek approval. This may be the toughest suggestion for you to follow -- and the most important. Whether you'te a teenager seeking approval from your peers, a middle-aged parent seeking the approval of your kids, or a man or woman seeking the approval of a partner, it all amounts to the same thing. You're giving your personal power away every time you seek validation from someone else for who you are.

T. J. MacGregor

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.

Sex without love is like a goddamn business transaction. And sometimes both parties feel as if they got a good deal, but that doesn't make it any less so.

The marks on our lives are like music notes on the page--they sing a song.

Near or far, there are burdens and terrors in sisterhood, and perhaps the nearer, the more complicated.

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.

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

It's over me like a ton of water, the things I don't know.

You know the sultans used to light their garden parties with turtles? They'd put candles on their backs and let them wander around. Hundreds of them.

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.

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

Linnea Sinclair

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

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

Hatred can eat at you until there's nothing left, until you become the thing you hate.

I didn't think about anything past tomorrow because anything past tomorrow was just like cloud busting - it depended soley on the person looking at the clouds and it could rain any minute