American Novelist Quotes

It is rather calming to remember that you really couldn't have foreseen what is happening to you.

Margaret Widdemer

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

It's wonderful to feel desired. There's a sense of power in it, really.

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

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.

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.

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

(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.

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

Jennifer McMahon

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.

The older people get, the more like themselves they become, if you see what I mean.

Barbara D'Amato

The house protects the dreamer; the houses that are important to us are the ones that allow us to dream in peace. Guests we've had stop in for a night or two all come down the first morning, ready to tell their dreams.

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.

There are many more ways to be attractive than to be beautiful.