Quotes by Women Novelists

Jane Austen

J. K. Rowling

Agatha Christie

Virginia Woolf

Colette

Selma Lagerlöf

Pearl S. Buck

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.

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.

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.

What would have been the effect upon religion if it had come to us through the minds of women?

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

No one knows how it is that with one glance a boy can break through into a girl's heart.

Just remember, I am not going anywhere, he said, still watching her lips. And if you ever try to hide from me, I will not believe you are dead. I will find you. Count on it.

Diana Pharaoh Francis

The world is shaped by two things — stories told and the memories they leave behind.

I will be thin and pure like a glass cup. Empty. Pure as light. Music. I move my hands over my body - my shoulders, my collarbone, my rib cage, my hip bones like part of an animal skull, my small thighs. In the mirror my face is pale and my eyes look bruised. My hair is pale and thin and the light comes through. I could be a lot younger than seventeen. I could be a child still, untouched.

Francesca Lia Block

Surrealism could not be made up. It was the very electricity of the real.

To share a hiding place, physical or psychological, is as intimate as love.

Perfume companies ought to bottle the smell of crisp bacon. Forget pheromones. I'll bet a woman with a little spot of bacon grease behind her ears would attract every male within a five-mile radius.

After she wrote her first two novels:

I thought I'd walk down the street and everybody would know I had written a book. But nobody took any notice of these two novels, and I stopped writing. I felt uneasy for about three years.

Beryl Bainbridge

These are all I have. I do not have the wide, bright beacon of some solid old lighthouse, guiding ships safely home, past the jaggedrocks. I only have these little glimmers that flicker and then go out.

To define a man: he must be a creature who makes me feel that I am a woman.

Are you determined to leave me in this world to live without my heart?

Kristin Cashore

Intimacy between stepchildren and stepparents is indeed proverbially difficult.

Murasaki Shikibu

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

We turn to literature to remedy the loss, to impose some kind of meaningful order on the nonsequential.

There has come a time when we can no longer remain silent but must speak up for our country which is being sold, abused, mined, depleted, drained, overworked, over-loved, its plants and animals becoming endangered and exterminated faster than we can renew them. Our country is silent, so we must speak and act to save it.

O how beautiful is morning!
How the sunbeams strike the daisies
And the kingcups fill the meadow
Like a golden-shielded army
Marching to the uplands fair.

What compels any of us to do the things we do when deep down a part of us just wants to break free from it all?

Actors between plays are like ghosts looking for bodies to inhabit.