Novelist Quotes

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

A man would rather fail according to his own ideas than succeed according to another's.

Kate Langley Bosher

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.

"You know, Mouse," [Tabby] said, "a brilliant cat like me should have smart friends; people who can count to more than four." "I can count to more than four," answered Mouse, very offended. "And I can do hard sums, and I know geography and history, and I can knit and..."

My attraction to story is a ceaseless current that runs through the center of me. My inexhaustible ardor for reading seems connected to my hunger for storylines that show up in both books and in the great tumbling chaos of life.

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

Crises of expression and spasms of eros:
that's the man of today,
the inside a vacuum,
the continuity of personality
provided by his suit,
which with stout cloth might be good for ten years.

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.

Within walking distance of any spot on Earth there's probably more than enough mystery to investigate in a lifetime.

Alix Kates Shulman

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

There is no power in nature which from nothing could have made the universe, and none which could reduce the universe to nothing:

I have learned in my thirty-odd years of serious writing only one sure lesson: stories, like whiskey, must be allowed to mature in the cask.

Seán Ó Faoláin

It is a truism throughout the civilized galaxy that when you go to the police, your troubles really begin.

Robert Sheckley

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

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

Patrick O'Brian

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

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

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.

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

We only have one life to live, and must go on with it to the end, that if we feel it is meaningless, then we ourselves must give it meaning.

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.

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

Josephine Pinckney

Fate isn't some middle-aged man with a squint who won't recognize you if you change your clothes.

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

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