English Novelist Quotes

The first breath of autumn was in the air, a prodigal feeling, a feeling of wanting, taking, and keeping before it is too late.

What has patriotism come to be but greed and false pride, when the only way it can show itself is by shedding blood to gain gold? More economic advantage, more territory, more power.

For chess, that superb, cold, infinitely satisfying anodyne to life, I feel the ardour of a lover, the humility of a disciple.

There is no merit in a special talent unless its exercise is of use to others.

But while our parting was mutually acceptable and even expedient, still it was painful. And I would like to think it hurt both of us, for I certainly felt it: a wrenching inside, like some small but improbably necessary organ was no longer in there, that it was missing, torn or fallen out. And at the time I'd thought that was the end of it; what was missing was gone forever

But truth, that dangerous commodity, has a way of sticking...

Margery Sharp
Margery Sharp
But thou mayst grant this humble prayer,
Forget me not! forget me not!

Marrows - alas! - are arriving in a steady stream at the back door.... Oddly enough, the majority of people who grow them in Fairacre say, as they hand them over: 'Funny thing! I don't care for them myself. In fact, none of the family likes them!' But still they plant them. It must be the fascination of seeing such a wonderful return for one small seed, that keeps marrow-growers at their dubious task.

The old creep out at the churchyard gate, while the young bound in at the front door.

The only situation which might justify panic is one in which panic is likely to help. Such a situation never arises. Though pretended panic may sometimes cause a useful diversion, real panic can never be anything other than a waste of energy.

Skullion had little use for contraceptives at the best of times. Unnatural, he called them, and placed them in the lower social category of things along with elastic-sided boots and made-up bow-ties. Not the sort of attire for a gentleman.

I send thee pansies while the year is young,
Yellow as sunshine, purple as the night;
Flowers of remembrance, ever fondly sung
By all the chiefest of the Sons of Light.

For true happiness, sane enjoyment, you must look to the country, not town. Only you want one true heart beside you with which to enjoy it!

Her own excited feelings had magnified it in length, and breadth, and height — had made a molehill into a mountain...

Ellen Wood (author)
Ellen Wood (author)
A circus here, a circus there; here today, gone tomorrow. Big Brother watching you. Fear eats the soul.

Do something today that reflects who you are, what you are capable of, what you care about. Give yourself plenty of evidence of what you can do, and you will not doubt your abilities to do anything.

David Niven
David Niven
Evil exists in us all, Torak. Some fight it. Some feed it. That's how it's always been.

Michelle Paver
Michelle Paver
Oh why was I born for this time? Before one is thirty to know more dead than living people.

There's no way out of this, it's stark: live or die. Every given moment a bubble that bursts. Step on, from one to the next, ever onwards, a rainbow of stepping stones, each bursting softly as your foot touches and passes on. Till one step finds only empty air. Till that step, live.

Ainsley walked round him, shivering and rubbing his nose. The nose felt that it was running, or felt that it didn't feel it was running when it was

A journalist who has to borrow a typewriter is bad news.

It takes strength to be proud of yourself and to accept yourself when you know that you have something out of the ordinary about you.

Her beauty, passive in despair, Through sand and seaweed shone, The fairest jelly-fish I e'er Had set mine eyes upon. It would have made a stone abuse The callousness of fate, This creature of prismatic hues, Stranded and desolate!

On the qualities of a work of art:
To be alive. To have a real life of its own. The miracle is that it should live in the person who reads it. And if it is real and true, it does, for five hundred years, for generation after generation.

There's Conservatives an' they want to make things better by keepin' 'em jus' like what they are now. An' there's Lib'rals an' they want to make things better by alterin' them jus' a bit, but not so's anyone'd notice, an' there's communists an' they want to make things better by killin' everyone but themselves.

Richmal Crompton
Richmal Crompton