Novelist Quotes

I have always noticed that people only think you are stupid if you do things differently from them.

If the world held magic powerful enough to make the elephant appear, then there must exist, too, magic in equal measure, magic powerful enough to undo what had been done.

Rather like spent swimmers, who had given up the hope of rescue and then had suddenly met with it, they were sensing with all their being, the feel of the solid ground beneath their feet, the grateful monotony of the skies above their heads,... and everywhere about them the immanence of God.... The Chinaberry Tree became a Temple.

Jessie Redmon Fauset

For the first time, I had been struck by the excitement of the traveler who looks history in her subtle face.

Elizabeth Kostova

The tiny flame danced beneath her fluttering breath, and she lifted the taper high above her head as she warily approached her visitor. His translucent eyes reflected the flickering light, and the hungry yearning visible in those luminous depths was so intense it seemed almost tangible.

Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

I never like anyone till I've seen him at his worst.

Men to whom wine had brought death long before lay by springs of wine and drank still, too stupefied to know their lives were past.

Dying men think of funny things-and that's what we all are here, aren't we? Dying men.

There is nothing more distressing or tiresome than a writer standing in front of an audience and reading his work.

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

Mona's Law. That's what she calls it. She says you can have a hot job, a hot lover and a hot apartment, but you can't have all three at the same time.

Armistead Maupin

No one knows how it is that with one glance a boy can break through into a girl's heart.

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.

Actors between plays are like ghosts looking for bodies to inhabit.

It was odd how one found oneself making trivial conversation on important occasions. Perhaps it was because one could not say what was really in one's mind.

When I think about it, if I had to choose, I'd rather be happy than write.

London is a city of clubs and private houses. You have to be a member.

Our history is every human history; a black and gory business, with more scoundrels than wise men at the lead, and more louts than both put together to cheer and follow.

There's a lot more satisfaction in thinking about money than in spending it, if people only knew.

Josephine Pinckney

All my life, I knew, all my life I would be haunted by words from Shakespeare.

Sarah Smith (writer)

She said, 'God knows they owe me nought,
I tossed them to the foaming sea,
I tossed them to the howling wastes,
Yet still their love comes home to me.'

Nothing comes back. The eye sees for a moment, the ear hears, but look, now it is gone.

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.

One of the oddest features of western Christianized culture is its ready acceptance of the myth of the stable family and the happy marriage. We have been taught to accept the myth not as an heroic ideal, something good, brave, and nearly impossible to fulfil, but as the very fiber of normal life. Given most families and most marriages, the belief seems admirable but foolhardily.

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!

Ellen Buckingham Mathews