Quotes by Women Novelists

Fortune does not change men, it unmasks them. —SUZANNE NECKER, WIFE OF JACQUES NECKER, MINISTER OF FINANCE

I felt something stir within me. It took a moment to recognise it. Anger.

What arrogance, what stupidity led us to this desolation, to this madness, to this wickedness, to this war, to this death? When this cruel war was over, there will be no more war. It will not happen again, never again. NEVER AGAIN, never again.

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

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

It was a noteworthy lesson, even for someone who'd been fed a daily diet of italicized lessons: that people in high places, luminaries with advanced degrees in Classics and in possession of excellent manners, can disappoint you as profoundly as anyone else.

This body is yours. No one can ever take it from you, if only you will accept yourself, claim it again--your arms, your spine, your ribs, the small of your back. It's all yours. All this bounty, all this beauty, all this strength and grace is yours. This garden is yours. Take it back. Take it back.

And here is our girl, looking— If possible, worse than before. (You thought this was Cinderella transistorized?)

James Tiptree, Jr

I've given up reading the papers. Since the world's so obviously bent on killing itself, I decided months ago to sit back and let it.

Is this just what you do? You start to get involved, get scared when the emotions are too much, and then dream up any excuse you can to run? Or to invite the other person to dump you?

It is interesting how keen people are for you to do something they would never dream of doing themselves, how enthusiasticall y they drive you to your own destruction.

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

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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.

The ultimate umpire of all things in Life is — Fact.

Agnes Christina Laut

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

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

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

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

Life on earth, filled with uncertainty and change, seemed far more difficult than what lay beyond the grave.

Intimacy between stepchildren and stepparents is indeed proverbially difficult.

Murasaki Shikibu

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

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.

The language of her grief is silence. She has learned it well, its idioms, its nuances. Over the years, silence within her small body has grown large and powerful.

Fresh blood at midnight isn't red. It's a purplish black that easily blends into the shadows.

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

Kristin Cashore