Novelist Quotes

We accept too damned many things on the explanations of people who could have good reasons for lying.

To write a poem is like trying to catch a lizard without its tail falling off.

Lawrence Durrell

Why do you think nothing concrete and lasting happened out of the 60s? Lots of people have been saying this lately, and I can't help feeling that the changes were so profound and total that no one remembers that there were changes! The 50s, my friends, happened in a different country than this one. We did not get everything we wanted, no. The world is not perfect now, and is that why some of us think we accomplished nothing? … Try to remember what life was like in the 50s. That's all I can say to that. It's the power structures that are trying to pretend that the change wasn't lasting, so they can convince people that protests and the like are futile now.
But they lie. I'm glad to see that many young people aren't buying it.

You are a terror, aren't you? Leave this yard alone. I know just where everything is in it, and I won't be able to find the things I need for my transport spells if you tidy them up.'So there was probably a bundle of souls or a box of chewed hearts somewhere out here, Sophie thought. She felt really thwarted. 'Tidying up is what I'm here for!' she shouted at Howl. 'Then you must think of a new meaning for your life,' Howl said.

Diana Wynne Jones

A book exists at the intersection of the author's subconscious and the reader's response.

A man will be generally very old and feeble before he forgets how much money he has in the funds.

Anthony Trollope

We are a nation of children letting horrible things happen, and flunking Calc.

Hard, withering toil only can achieve a name; and long days and months and years must be passed in the chase of that bubble, reputation, which, when once grasped, breaks in your eager clutch into a hundred lesser bubbles, that soar above you still.

Donald Grant Mitchell

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.

I mucked about with his hair. His shoes
were where he left them. His shoes are where he
left them.

The people who keep coping, keep trying, no matter how many blows Fate takes at them. Nobody'll make a song about them, but they're heroes all the same.

Mercedes Lackey

The most underrated of all contemporary American writers of fiction.

Each man of us is living his own personal work of art, and cannot evade artistic responsibility for his product.

Richard McKenna

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

John Reed (novelist)

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

Opportunity is rare, and a wise man will never let it go by him.

Slowly, but very deliberately, the brooding edifice of seduction, creaking and incongruous, came into being, a vast Heath Robinson mechanism, dually controlled by them and lumbering gloomily down vistas of triteness. With a sort of heavy-fisted dexterity the mutually adapted emotions of each of them became synchronized, until the unavoidable anti-climax was at hand.

We are always the most violent against those whom we have injured.

Patrick O'Brian

Poetry is no more a narcotic than a stimulant; it is a universal bittersweet mixture for all possible household emergencies and its action varies accordingly as it is taken in a wineglass or a tablespoon, inhaled, gargled or rubbed on the chest by hard fingers covered with rings.

I am actually what my age and my upbringing have made me--a bourgeois who adheres to the British constitution, adheres to it rather than supports it, and the fact that this isn't dignified doesn't worry me.

How many chapters have been written about love verses - and how many more might be written! - might, would, could, should, or ought to be written! - I will venture to say, will be written!

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.

He was an admirer of the bullfight, and had once drawn my attention to the fact that only cricket and bullfighting had inspired any appreciable literature.

It is not merely the truth of science that makes it beautiful, but its simplicity.

Gym class was, of course, where the strongest, best-looking kids were made captains and chose us spazzes last. More important, it was where the figures of supposed authority allowed them to do so. Forget the work our parents did molding our minds and values. Everything fell apart as soon as we put on those maroon polyester gym suits.