American Novelist Quotes

At our worst in the Middle East, we unreservedly supported—or enthroned—medieval despots who supressed popular liberation efforts, thus driving moderate dissidents into the arms of fanatics. From our diplomatic personnel held hostage in Iran a generation ago, to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the United States, we have suffered for our support of repressive "stable" regimes that radicalized their own impoverished citizens. In the interests of stability, we looked the other way while secret police tortured and shabby armies massacred their own people, from Iran to Guatemala. But the shah always falls. Would that we could tattoo that on the back of every diplomat's hand: The shah always falls.

There's no way to explain to a child that the line between good and evil isn't nearly as black and white as a fairy tale would leave you to believe. That an ordinary person can turn into a villain, under the right circumstances. That sometimes we dragon slayers do things we aren't proud of.

With my poems, I finally won even my mother. The longest wooing of my life.

Count Erskyll said nothing for a moment. He was opposed to the use of force. Force, he believed, was the last resort of incompetence; he had said so frequently enough since this operation had begun. Of course, he was absolutely right, though not in the way he meant. Only the incompetent wait until the last extremity to use force, and by then, it is usually too late to use anything, even prayer.

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me
Cruelly, being barren.
Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.

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

Trusting Merlin is like giving a migrant scorpion a lift inside your hat.

What was it like? Zeke asked, changing the subject as much as he was willing to. Fighting in the war, I mean?
He grumbled, It was war, you dumb kid. Everybody I liked got killed, and most of the folks I'd just as soon have shot made it out with medals on their chests. It wasn't fair and it sure as hell wasn't any fun. And Jesus knows it's been going on way too long.

Words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted.

She's almost got it; nearly understands his Poisson equation...

On the wings of love, we'll soar to the depths.

John Reed (novelist)

We are not damned. We never were. Who under the sun has the right to damn any living breathing creature?

A Hamburger is warm and fragrant and juicy. A hamburger is soft and nonthreatening. It personifies the Great Mother herself who has nourished us from the beginning. A hamburger is an icon of layered circles, the circle being at once the most spiritual and the most sensual of shapes. A hamburger is companionable and faintly erotic. The nipple of the Goddess, the bountiful belly-ball of Eve. You are what you think you eat.

Beauty was the promise of happiness, not happiness itself; and the anticipated world was often more rich than anything real.

Kim Stanley Robinson

The idea is to perceive your invention as a reality that can be understood as a dream. The idea is to turn flesh and blood into literary characters and literary characters into flesh and blood.

It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to be itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true.

Patrick Rothfuss

The sign of a good decision is the multiplicity of reasons for it.

Mary Doria Russell

I never seem to have anything that if I lost it I'd care too much about.

I believe there's a right way to live and to die. The people who can do that are interesting to me.

Truth, though, is nothing in the face of self-falsehood, and principles are of no value if the idealist cannot live up to his own standards.

R. A. Salvatore

The sudden and abrupt removal of my all-consuming goal... well, it was like I was a donut, and somebody had sucked all the jelly out of me. But I could stuff new jelly in there. It would just get my hands a little sticky in the process.

Brandon Sanderson

The man was looking his way, with glasses. Buford waved. You never knew what old friend was out there. The Reb officer took off his hat, bowed formally.

We'll abduct Garian. Or Jason." "And—?" "And dump them into the ocean. Nobody would ever pay a ransom for them.

At the moment developing a nice little inoffensive cancer somewhere on dry land seemed infinitely preferable to what she was grimly convinced was soon to be her death by drowning way too far out at sea.

Interesting things happen along borders - transitions - not in the middle where everything is the same.

Neal Stephenson