Novelist Quotes

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

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.

Boredom has a tendency to bring out the worst in people's faces.

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

Robert Sheckley

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

The cast of Hamlet had not moved much. They had that haunted yet hopeful look in their eyes, like the ones you see in photographs of people crammed into steerage compartments, traveling to some new, unknown land.

Maureen Johnson

Life isn't perfect. It's not supposed to be. We all make mistakes. You bash your head against the wall and you get hurt, but you walk away and make the best of it. And that's what makes it life, Brenna, not perfection. You'll never find happiness if you only expect to find a perfect life. Happiness is something we reach for while we try to learn from our disappointments.

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

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

In all experience, there is something to be learned. In deepest sorrow, wisdom is found. In the well of despair, hope rises.

Juliet Marillier

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.

A man who so much resembled a Baked Alaska—sweet, warm and gungy on the outside, hard and cold within.

Of C. P. Snow

Visiting any shop for the first time is exciting. There's always that buzz as you push open the door; that hope; that belief - that this is going to be the shop of all shops, which will bring you everything you ever wanted, at magically low prices.

Sophie Kinsella

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

Patrick O'Brian

Oh, love. Love is best of all. There is no such total element, not even pain. Who has ever loved, knows this. I need not say more.

All of us create our own versions of an event, of our lives, even, not because were liars, necessarily, but because we can only see and understand the truth from our own viewpoint, and a shifting viewpoint at that.

You'll remember someone who broke your heart, and you'll think to yourself, 'Oh yes, I remember how that feels.' But you can't.

I loved all the parts of him, even the ones I didn't understand.

I don't have any of the answers, son. Never did. All I can do is keep asking the questions. Keep trying to make sense of why people do what they do.

Rodman Philbrick

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

Sarah Smith (writer)

Thomas reached out and took my hand, turned it palm up, and said, "I believe that's healing very nicely." Aunt Charlotte opened the door just as he turned my hand over again and brushed a kiss across my knuckles. I experienced a nearly overpowering desire to hit him in the eye.

Caroline Stevermer

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

Kate and Mercer gave each other a smile with a future in it.

The idea of a series of items, following one another docilely, forms the only possible reasonable approach to life if you have to live it with a home and a husband and children, none of whom would dream of following one another docilely.

Shirley Jackson

With each spring comes new life, energy and green growth. In summer comes the sun, warm, kind and enduring. Fall brings its canvas of color in careful, gentle change. Winter brews into faithful strength, beauty in pure white. And then comes you. You are all that Nature offers, a blessing, a gift.. You are the fifth season.

Jason F. Wright