British Novelist Quotes

Everything passes. Joy. Pain. The moment of triumph; the sigh of despair. Nothing lasts forever - not even this.

Paul Stewart (writer)

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

Gerald Gardner (Wiccan)

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

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.

Belonging is a contested state. Home is a place riddled with vexing questions.

People should always mind their own business. More trouble is caused in this world by interference than any other single thing.

Round and round in his mind went the kaleidoscope of facts and impressions which he felt sure held the key to the mystery...

The dust comes secretly day after day,
Lies on my ledge and dulls my shining things.
But O this dust that I shall drive away
Is flowers and Kings,
Is Solomon's temple, poets, Nineveh.

Flee and your bad behavior will be fixed in people's minds. Return, seem in goo spirits, and everyone will doubt their own memory of events.

Well, I didn't need them. I didn't need anyone. I was Lola Rose. I just wished I looked more like my idea of Lola Rose.

Jacqueline Wilson

She touched his hand for the last time. "Oh, Karim, that we have already done. But always there was a problem between us. How can I explain? I wasn't me, and you weren't you. From the very beginning to the very end, we didn't see things. What we did—we made each other up."

It isn't important what you do, it is the attitude with which you proceed through the world that matters.

I do not say that there is no glory to be gained [in war]; but it is not personal glory. In itself, no cause was ever more glorious than that of men who struggle, not to conquer territory, not to gather spoil, not to gratify ambition, but for freedom, for religion, for hearth and home, and to revenge the countless atrocities inflicted upon them by their oppressors.

Love is about needing someone, about feeling as if the day isn't quite right if they're not there. Its about knowing that, no matter how bad a day you've had, the moment you see them again or hear their voice, the world is back in its place.

Young people who need a love potion very seldom have five thousand dollars. If they had they would not need a love potion.

John Collier (fiction writer)

There had been a frozen mist here, and the trees were spun into feathers. Their fragile brilliance made me wonder why, into the spotlessness of Creation, God had seen fit to introduce soiling, twisting, rampaging, Man.

I think the hardest thing in life is when we see those we love turn down a wrong path, and when no entreaty will induce them to retrace their steps.

Rosa Nouchette Carey

There were also the razor marks on her wrists and forearms, half a dozen per arm, not very deep, not very convincing really, just a lame, hapless attempt at hurting herself. There hadn't even been that much blood and nobody at the hospital had been at all surprised. These scars, for some reason, he didn't mind. Maybe they even appealed to him. They showed that she was weak and in need of him.

Geoff Nicholson

When engaged in safe occupations, and living in healthy countries, men are much more apt to be frugal, than in unhealthy, or hazardous occupations, and in climates pernicious to human life. Sailors and soldiers are prodigals.... War and pestilence have always waste and luxury, among the other evils that follow in their train.

Since when was the stock market an accurate barometer of anything?

We, who have had tender, perfect mothers, would like to make it law that the other kind should always be called 'she-parents,' or 'female progenitors,' or any other descriptive title, but not profane the sacred name of mother!

Florence L. Barclay

Nobody hopped into a wardrobe to find Narnia; they hopped in, thinking it was just a wardrobe. They didn't climb up the Faraway Tree, knowing it was a Faraway Tree; they thought it was just a really big tree. Harry Potter thought he was a normal boy; Mary Poppins was supposed to be a regular nanny. It's the first and only rule. Magic comes when you're not looking for it

Words become meaningless, the mind cuts itself off from reality for a little while, a necessary breathing space until one is ready to cope.

Because parents are transients in the maternity care system, there is little cumulative birth experience over successive generations of mothers. Women giving birth don't make the same mistakes as their mothers or grandmothers-they make new ones.

Elizabeth Noble

Everyone said that one day I was going to have a big accident, an accident to end all accidents. One day you might look up and see a kid falling from the sky. That would be me.