Quotes by Women Novelists

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

Jane Aiken Hodge

Maybe da Vinci didn't serve lamb in his painting of the Last Supper, but there was room for interpretation. Jesus himself was the lamb led to the slaughter.

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.

A woman will not understand what true dependency is until she is cradling her own infant in her arms; nor will she likely achieve the self-confidence she craves until she has withstood, and transcended, the weight of responsibility a family places upon her — a weight that makes all the paperwork and assignments of her in-basket seem feather-light.

Danielle Crittenden

Work is a dull thing; you cannot get away from that. The only agreeable existence is one of idleness, and that is not, unfortunately, always compatible with continuing to exist at all.

After all, this is a world of rock and water and air. It is elemental. It is not ours.

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

If we think saying no is going to hurt a guy's feelings, imagine what a restraining order will do.

Susan Jane Gilman

Sometimes you just want the comfort of knowing that somebody really does care about you (even if they show it in peculiar ways).

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

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

Why is it that so many people think that charity consists in giving away merely what they cannot use instead of the article the recipient needs?

Mabel Osgood Wright

Is it not the case that many a life journey starts out in the opposite direction to its destiny?

Sena Jeter Naslund

That there should be a purpose to suffering, that a person should be chosen for it, special — these are houses of the mind, in which whole peoples have found shelter.

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.

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

Sisterhood is a funny thing. It's easy to recognize, but hard to define.

I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Books are for me, it must be said, the most important thing.

Diane Setterfield

Thou hast only to follow the wall far enough and there will be a door in it.

Marguerite de Angeli

Three things Marco taught me today race through my mind: boys will lie to your face just to have sex with you, don't trust any boy who says I love you, and never date a boy who lives on the south side of Fairfield.

To act the part of a true friend requires more conscientious feeling than to fill with credit and complacency any other station or capacity in social life.

Sarah Stickney Ellis

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

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

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.