Novelist Quotes

It takes more than Love and Passion to make a relationship work

Christie Ridgway

None but the estimable shall hear from me that I esteem them. The whole world is entitled to my courtesy, but greater tribute than that must be earned through virtuous acts.

Sophie von La Roche

Not being able to live without someone is not love. It's need.

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.

When Mama starts to move across a room, people pay attention. You can never be sure she's not going to grab you by the top of the head to steady herself. And she's pretty free with that walking stick, too.

I know already that I can survive it. That's the sorrow of it all. That whatever comes I'll survive it. I mean, even if the worst were to be true, would it really be the worst?

Writing that gets rewritten as the earth moves. If you look at the sky that way, it's this massive shifting poem, or maybe a letter, first written by one author, and then, when the earth moves, annotated by another. So I stare and stare until, one day, I can read it.

Maria Dahvana Headley

Not so deep down, we all know that safety is an illusion, that only character melds us together. That's why most of us do everything we can (healthy and unhealthy) to ward off that real feeling of standing alone so close to the edge of the world.

No, every person on this planet has darkness inside them. Buried so deep that only you know it's there when your world is coming to an end. Oh, but it's there. It's always there.

Alexander Gordon Smith

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

Have I mentioned that I expect death around every turn, that every blue sky has a safe sailing out of it, that every bus runs me over, that every low, mean syllable uttered in my direction seems to intimate the violence of murder, that every family seems like an opportunity for ruin and every marriage a ceremony into which calamity will fall and hearts will be broken and lives destroyed and people branded by the mortifications of love?

But it is never over;
nothing ends until we want it to.
Look, in shattered midnights,
On black ice under silver trees,
We are still dancing, dancing.

Gwendolyn MacEwen

Justice requires lawyers who are prepared, witnesses who tell the truth, judges who know the law, and jurors who stay awake. Justice is the North Star, the burning bush, the holy virgin. It cannot be bought, sold, or mass produced. It is intangible, ineffable, and invisible, but if you are to spend your life in its pursuit, it is best to believe it exists, and that you can attain it.

I certainly supported a woman's right to choose, but to my mind the time to choose was before, not after the fact.

The implications of self-definition, self-celebration, and perhaps not a little self-inflation and self-designation are nevertheless quite as obvious in each as for all.

Albert Murray (writer)

Sometimes when we think we're protecting ourselves, we're really hurting ourselves. And sometimes the people around us too.

It takes bravery to care for someone — no matter who he is or what made him, whether he is weak or walking or jumping out of windows. The risk involved is enormous.

Deb Olin Unferth

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.

Three things Marco taught me today race through my mind: boys will lie to your face just to have sex with you, don't trust any boy who says I love you, and never date a boy who lives on the south side of Fairfield.

Mostly though, they waited. For the mail. For the news. For the bells. For breakfast and lunch and dinner. For one day to be over and the next day to begin.

Sunday, that day so tedious to the triflers of earth, so full of beautiful reposes of calmness and strength for the earnest and heavenly minded.

Maria Jane McIntosh

Hatred can eat at you until there's nothing left, until you become the thing you hate.

Aunt Loretta has something that maybe you could call class. It's not the made-up kind that Grandma has, fake pearls and Sunday hats, but something that comes to you as if you were born to the king and queen. Aunt Loretta understands better than Grandma that reading a big book is more classy than wearing fake pearls watching TV.

Heidi W. Durrow

A neglect of one's sentimental education early in life could bear the most unfortunate fruit.

Daniel Kehlmann

There was a thick carpet upon the floor, a sofa piled with cushions in one corner, and several other articles of furniture. The walls, however, were uncovered and were stained with damp. A great pink fungus stood out within a few inches of the bed, a grim mixture of exquisite colouring and loathsome imperfections. The atmosphere was fetid.

E. Phillips Oppenheim