Quotes by Women Novelists

A name is precious; it carries inside it a language, a history, a set of traditions, a particular way of looking at the world. Losing it meant losing my ties to all those things too.

Since each child reads only about six hundred books in the course of childhood, each book should nourish them in some way — with new ideas, insight, humor, or vocabulary.

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?

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

I know where my heart is, and I can go home again, whenever I like. Mother likes to say, "You can take the girl out the projects, but you can't take the projects out the girl." That may not apply to everyone, but in my case it's true. And I would have it no other way.

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

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

Marguerite de Angeli

A fruit is not afraid of its own weight. It grows into its skin fully. It is whole, each part of its body equally alive.

Happiness is simple. Everything we do to find it is complicated.

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

Susan Jane Gilman

My job is to ensure the sanctity of this House. Ensuring the sanity of its Master seemed like a good start.

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

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Sunday, that day so tedious to the triflers of earth, so full of beautiful reposes of calmness and strength for the earnest and heavenly minded.

Maria Jane McIntosh

Patriotism was a great thing but it worked best when it was tempered by common sense.

Jayne Ann Krentz

Stories never really end. They can go on and on and on. It's just that sometimes, at a certain point, one stops telling them.

Mary Norton (author)

People think they have to be good before they can act good. But... it works just as well the other way 'round.

He always said she was smart, but their conversations were a mined field in which at any moment she might make the wrong verbal move and find her ignorance exploding in her face.

The moon drowsed between the trees like a great yellow moth.

Hallie Erminie Rives

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Kristin Cashore