Quotes by Women Novelists

Jane Austen

J. K. Rowling

Agatha Christie

Virginia Woolf

Colette

Selma Lagerlöf

Pearl S. Buck

To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people coming home in the evening, is a heartbreaking task for men who know good writing from bad. They do it, but instinctively draw out of harm's way anything precious that might be damaged by contact with the public, or anything sharp that might irritate its skin.

To feel admiration for a man all through one's married life would, I think, be excessively tedious.

Agatha Christie

A persuadable temper might sometimes be as much in favour of happiness as a very resolute character.

So now, whenever I despair, I no longer expect my end, but some bit of luck, some commonplace little miracle which, like a glittering link, will mend again the necklace of my days.

Expecting to be able to get rid of the competitive drive, first of all, flies in the face of human nature — and little girls certainly have this drive, as much as little boys do, or at least the little girls I have observed in my immediate family have it.

Many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are.

Lia: "You've changed your mind about wanting to marry me. You're afraid I'll burn down your home. Embarrass you in front of all the other city brutes." Zane: "I'm afraid," he said gently, "that you will burn down my heart.

The gorilla is a strict vegetarian like the elephant and buffalo — three of the four most dangerous animals in Africa. It behooves one to walk softly with vegetarians.

Mary Hastings Bradley

Prove it. I'll measure your words against your actions, and from that I will determine your worth.

In life, periods of solitude were blessings. Dying alone was a bitter curse.

Dean flashed me a smile that promised rule-breaking and breathlessness.

Caitlin Kittredge

The familiar was usually invisible; how many people really noticed everything they saw?

I think you will agree that life's plans are not always tied up in neat little packages. Occasionally we find ourselves at unexpected crossroads with more than one opportunity from which to choose. Time itself is often the best indicator of which decision to make, for it can tell so many thing that are now hazy.

People and dogs and cows are born to be what they are. They may cover it up for a long time, but it will come out sooner or later.

There are deep lines on each side of his mouth and I know they are the scars from the thin blade of life.

Deborah Joy Corey

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

Juliana's a year older than me, but she sometimes seems younger - mostly because she's the opposite of cynical and I'm the opposite of the opposite of cynical.

Claire Scovell LaZebnik

You are my country, Desdemona.... My Egypt. My hot, harrowing desert and my cool, verdant Nile, infinitely lovely and unfathomable and sustaining.

Connie Brockway

You have no idea, sir, how difficult it is to be the victim of benevolence.

Jane Aiken Hodge

You'd have thought that after suffering such a loss nothing else would matter to her but that didn't seem to be how it worked. She was fearful about everything now. It was as if she had finally seen the awful power of fate, it's deviousness, the way it could wipe out in an instant the one thing you had been certain you could rely on, and now she was constantly looking over her shoulder, trying to work out where the next blow might fall.

Everything on the earth has a purpose, every disease an herb to cure it, and every person a mission. This is the Indian theory of existence.

Mourning Dove (author)

But thou mayst grant this humble prayer,
Forget me not! forget me not!

He's been a waiten there in th wood you might say since before I was born. I jist brung him out a little — but one a these days, jist you wait an see, we'll find th time an a face fer him an bring him out a that block.

Harriette Simpson Arnow

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.

Sometimes you remember your life in photographs that were never taken.