American Novelist Quotes

At a certain point memory becomes a beach strewn with landmines, all life's many losses buried in those sands.

Why is it that people don't know what to say when something bad has happened to someone they know? Maybe because they think there are some magic words that will make everything all right again, only they don't know what the words are.

Ellen Wittlinger

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.

Dying men think of funny things-and that's what we all are here, aren't we? Dying men.

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

Jennifer McMahon

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

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

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

Carol Ryrie Brink

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

No man suffers injustice without learning,
vaguely but surely, what justice is.

Isaac Rosenfeld

(Socrates) said there were only two possibilities. Either the soul is immortal or, after death, things would be again as blank as they were before we were born.

There's something like a line of gold thread running through a man's words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself.

John Gregory Brown

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.

I wanted to be loved because I deserved it. Except I was scared to be loved like this, because what if I stopped deserving it? Unconditional love was insulting, but conditional love was terrifying.

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

You make choices that are good and sound, but the gods have other plans for you.

That's the point of it, to have those connections, as painful as they are, as much worry as they might cause; they give back in strength and comfort and joy, believe it or not, and the more connections you make, the happier you are, the more point there is to getting up and getting through the day.

Gregory Galloway

All schoolchildren are hostages to red tape and fiscal insufficiency.

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

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

Jacqueline Kelly

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

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

It would never do for me to lose my wits in the presence of a man who had none too many of his own.

Anna Katharine Green

Dignity is like morality, Mirabilis barked. Too much is as bad as too little.

It ought to be a crime for any woman to have children that writes books.

Josephine Daskam Bacon