Novelist Quotes

The attitude to sexual love in the 'pop' song is so ugly and mechanical as to seem schizoid, and psychopathological. Exposed as they are to such powerful cultural statements, young people are being encouraged to forfeit genuine commitment in love in favour of depersonalised sexual activity, with an undercurrent of violence, and to take false solutions in which they must deny their deepest needs, by hate.

If there be one attribute of the Deity which astonishes me more than another, it is the attribute of patience. The Great Soul that sits on the throne of the universe is not, never was, and never will be, in a hurry. In the realm of nature, every thing has been wrought out in the august consciousness of infinite leisure; and I bless God for that geology which gives me a key to the patience in which the creative process was effected.

Josiah Gilbert Holland

A lot of people get flipped out if you're quiet. They say stuff like, What are you thinking? And if they don't start interrogating you, they start talking, going on and on about stuff that's totally irrelevant, and the silence gets so big and loud that it's scary.

I can't keep giving my will into other people hands no more, ain't? I have to decide what I want to do for myself. No answer. It wasn't going to tell her.

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.

Her impulse, her need, to be the corrector of injustices, warden of the downtrodden flock. And

Khaled Hosseini

I thought that when they said Atlantic Charter, that meant me and everybody in Africa and Asia and everywhere. But it seems like the Atlantic is an ocean that does not touch anywhere but North America and Europe.

Zora Neale Hurston

Alas, being a New Zealander is such an exquisite dilemma.

I wanted to save my face because only that was what I had.

The Quito telephone service is about as reliable as roulette.

Christopher Isherwood

That indescribable expression peculiar to people who hope they have not been asleep, but know they have.

Helen Hunt Jackson

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

At least half of my life's many mistakes can be safely put down to impetuosity: the other half derive from inertia.

He might have been a fine young man with a bad toothache; with the first even of his life. What ailed him above all, she felt, was that trouble was new to him...

There will always be people like me, who believe that to ripple the pages of a printed book is a special experience, one that through the centuries has taken millions from the darkness into the light.

Quintin Jardine

The shadows of Ina-Karekh are the place where nightmares dwell, but not their source. Never forget: the shadowlands are not elsewhere. We create them. They are within.

There is always money to kill people. There is never enough money for life affirming ends.

It seems to me like stealing, for men and women to live in the world and do nothing to make it better.

Sarah Orne Jewett

There is music in me, the music of a peasant people.

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

Logic hasn't wholly dispelled the society of witches and prophets and sorcerers and soothsayers.

Raymond F. Jones

As the Wheel of Time turns, places wear many names. Men wear many names, many faces. Different faces, but always the same man. Yet no one knows the Great Pattern the Wheel weaves, or even the Pattern of an Age. We can only watch, and study, and hope.

Each lost soul will be a hell unto itself, the boundless fire raging in its very vitals.

He turned then to Job, again using the King James's version. The translation from the Hebrew was narrower than the Greek but seemed more essential. It was the simple strong prose of men who believed and who were unafraid to name things.

And that's it; that's why I want to teach; that's the one and only compensation: to make a permanent difference in the life of a child.