British Novelist Quotes

He turned then to Job, again using the King James's version. The translation from the Hebrew was narrower than the Greek but seemed more essential. It was the simple strong prose of men who believed and who were unafraid to name things.

They strip-searched me!" he burst out. "Me! Old enough to be their grandfather and they made me stand naked in the road, my things all unpacked in the mud!

To offer a man friendship when love is in his heart is like giving a loaf of bread to one who is dying of thirst.

Frank Frankfort Moore

The ultimate purpose of Zen,' I remembered the roshi telling me, 'is not in the going away from the world but in the coming back. Zen is not just a matter of gaining enlightenment; it's a matter of acting in a world of love and compassion.

You can even get used to having a hole in your life where someone used to live. A hole where you thought they'd live for always, except that one day they just step sideways, without looking back or saying good-bye, and vanish forever.

She had been the quiet, rather plain girl, with a surprisingly sharp tongue if she was put out, lovely eyes and pretty hair and a way of looking very directly at one. Now he had to admit that she had become more important to him than anyone else in the world. The idea of a future without her wasn't to be borne. She had by some mysterious metamorphosis become more beautiful than anyone else he had ever encountered.

Archie had been no good as a dancer. He had trundled her about. She ought to have been warned by that; for dancing and sex were linked... and Archie, she had soon discovered trundled through sex.

Elizabeth Taylor (novelist)

You'll live astride the line that separates life from death. You'll become experienced in the wisdom of grief. You won't wait until people die to grieve for them; you'll give them their grief while they are still alive, for then judgment falls away, and there remains only the miracle of being.

Maybe this is a characteristic of happy people. An ability to be entertained by the world.

At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - relief or despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking - 'wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant!

Gareth Roberts (writer)

The Daily Worker has been renamed The Morning Star. I find nothing starry about it. A more informative new title would have been the Daily Striker.

Rayner Heppenstall

As Romeo and Juliet found to their cost, marriage is never just about two people falling in love, it is about families.

America was the worst place in the world in which to fail, fall sick, get old or die, because then your problems had crystallised into the unforgivable sin. Failure.

Humans crave knowledge, and when that craving ends, we are no longer human.

It was a day of gloom, and strange suspense,
And feverish, and inexplicable dread,
In Herculaneum's walls. The heavy, thick,
And torrid atmosphere; the solid, vast,
And strong—edg'd clouds, that through the firmament
In various and opposing courses moved:—
The wild scream of the solitary bird
That, at long intervals, flew terror-driven
On high:—the howling of the red-ey'd dog
As he gaz'd trembling on the angry heavens:-
The hollow moans that swept along the air,
Though every wind was lock'd,-portended all
That nature with some dire event was big,
And labour'd in its birth.

Edwin Atherstone

It was true that the city could still throw shadows filled with mystifying figures from its past, whose grip on the present could be felt on certain strange days, when the streets were dark with rain and harmful ideas.

Christopher Fowler

The witches are firm believers in reincarnation, and they say that 'once a witch always a witch.'

Gerald Gardner (Wiccan)

I give you my solemn vow to be your faithful partner in sickness and in health, to stand by your side in good times and in bad, to share your joy as well as your sorrow... I promise to love you unconditionally, to support you in your goals and dreams, to honor and respect you, to laugh with you and cry with you, to share my hopes and dreams with you, and bring you solace in times of need... And to cherish you for as long as we both shall live.

Is it for you to forgive me? Is it for me to forgive you? Is it for God to forgive us all, and for what? Where there's no judging on one side or the other, there's no forgiveness wanted.

E. Arnot Robertson

The great weakness of the West is that it has nothing with which to inspire loyalty except wealth. But what is wealth? Another washing machine, a bigger car, a nicer house to live in? Not much to feed the spirit in all that.

Most men, if you just tell them what to do in a businesslike fashion, will follow directions without thinking about it. One proceeds on the assumption that they'll do as they're told, and they do.

Lynne Reid Banks

A happy childhood is one of the best gifts that parents have it in their power to bestow.

Mary Cholmondeley

My love for my father has never been touched or approached by any other love. I hold him in my heart of hearts as a man apart from all other men, as one apart from all other beings.

The brilliant escape, the funny line to cap it, despite the lack of timing. And the girl was still dead. The last act had not materialised. The world, and himself, remained so far from what they should be: so imperfect.

Dim loneliness came imperceivably into the fields and he turned back. The birds piped oddly; some wind was caressing the higher foliage, turning it all one way, the way home. Telegraph poles ahead looked like half-used pencils; the small cross on the steeple glittered with a sharp and shapely permanence.