Quotes by Novelists - Page 17

A young man is the perfect soldier. He has great potential for aggression and a limited critical capacity - or none at all - with which to analyze it and judge how to channel it.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Have you ever observed that when a man gets a son he takes all the credit, and when he gets a daughter he blames his wife? And if they do not breed at all, we say it is because her womb is barren. We do not say it is because his seed is bad.

Hilary Mantel

Fame has only the span of the day they say. But to live in the hearts of people-that is worth something.

Ouida

People were kind and friendly and amusing, but they thought that companionship and conversation were synonymous, and some of them had voices that jarred in your head. There was a lot to be said for dogs. They understood without telling you so, and they were always pleasing to look at, awake or asleep, like Bingo. He slept now, with little whistling snores, in his basket at the side of the fire, his stubby legs and one whiskery eyebrow twitching to the fitful tempo of his dreams.

Monica Dickens

A sharp bolt of hunger hit Luther hard. His knees almost buckled, his poker face almost grimaced. For two weeks now his sense of smell had been much keener, no doubt a side effect of a strict diet. Maybe he got a whiff of Mabel's finest, he wasn't sure, but a craving came over him. Suddenly, he had to have something to eat. Suddenly, he wanted to snatch the bag from Kendall, rip open a package, and start gnawing on a fruitcake.

John Grisham

It is pleasure that lurks in the practice of every one of your virtues. Man performs actions because they are good for him, and when they are good for other people as well they are thought virtuous: if he finds pleasure in helping others he is benevolent; if he finds pleasure in working for society he is public-spirited; but it is for your private pleasure that you give twopence to a beggar as much as it is for my private pleasure that I drink another whiskey and soda. I, less of a humbug than you, neither applaud myself for my pleasure nor demand your admiration.

W Somerset Maugham

Family is just accident, Jessie. It's nothing personal, hon. They don't mean to get on your nerves. They don't even mean to be your family, they just are.

Marsha Norman

There are things that will not have themselves buried and put out of sight, as though they had never been.

Anthony Trollope

I don't want to see you. I don't like you. I don't like your face. You look like an insufferable egotist. You're impertinent. You're too sure of yourself. Twenty years ago I would have punched your face with the greatest of pleasure.

Ayn Rand

Why? Because true translation is not a binary affair between two languages but a triangular affair. The third point of the triangle being what lay behind the words of the original text before it was written. True translation demands a return to the pre-verbal

John Berger

Once a man strays out of the common herd, he's more likely to meet wolves in the thickets than angels.

Walter de la Mare

Wishes are sometimes just stories that have nowhere to go.

Yvette Christiansë

No man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.

Joseph Conrad

I could wish to spy the nakedness of their hearts, and through the different disguises of customs, climates, and religion, find out what is good in them, to fashion my own by. It is for this reason that I have not seen the Palais Royal - nor the facade of the Louvre - nor have attempted to swell the catalogues we have of pictures, statues, and churches - I conceive every fair being as a temple, and would rather enter in, and see the original drawings and loose sketches hung up in it, than the Transfiguration of Raphael itself.

Laurence Sterne

That is the trouble...You are a crowd of bits of boys all in the thing for what you will get. Demands, you call them. Well, I am against demands of any kind. You cannot reason with demand, and where there is no reason, there is no sense. As for your support, whatever you call it, some long word, what is the use of it?

Richard Llewellyn

The worst evil is not to commit crimes, but to fail to do the good one might have done.

Léon Bloy

Because if God doesn't exist we are the creaturesof highest consciousness in the universe. We alone understand thepassage of time and the value off every minute of human life. Andwhat constitutes evil, real evil, is the taking of a single human life. Whether a man would have died tomorrow or the day after oreventually . . . it doesn't matter. Because if God does not exist, this life . . . every second of it . . . is all we have.

Anne Rice

She influenced by the positivism of her race, was gazing into the future. While he was content with the present moment, not caring to know what would be the end of their love

Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

I like a highland friend who will stand by me not only when I am in the right but when I am a little in the wrong.

Sir Walter Scott

We're all just songs in the end. If we are lucky.

George R.R. Martin

Talent consists not in inventing shapes but in causing those that were invisible to emerge.

Muriel Barbery

Death, there will be death, aye. Your lordship lost a son at the Red Wedding. I lost four upon the Blackwater. And why? Because the Lannisters stole the throne. Go to King’s Landing and look on Tommen with your own eyes, if you doubt me. A blind man could see it. What does Stannis offer you? Vengeance. Vengeance for my sons and yours, for your husbands and your fathers and your brothers. Vengeance for your murdered lord, your murdered king, your butchered princes. Vengeance!

George R.R. Martin

Larry has been absorbed, as he wished, into that tumultuous conglomeration of humanity, distracted by so many conflicting interests, so lost in the world's confusion, so wistful of good, so cocksure on the outside, so diffident within, so kind, so hard, so trustful and so cagey, so mean and so generous, which is the people of the United States.

W Somerset Maugham

Jon Snow, is this a proper castle now? Not just a tower?”“It is.” Jon took her hand.“Good,” she whispered. “I wanted t’ see one proper castle, before … before I …”“You’ll see hundred castles. The battle’s done. Maester Aemon will see to you. You’re kissed by fire, remember? Lucky. It will take more than an arrow to kill you. Aemon will draw it out and patch you up, and we’ll get milk of the poppy for the pain.”She just smiled at that. “D’you remember that cave? We should have stayed in that cave. I told you so.”“We’ll go back to the cave,” he said.” You’re not going to die, Ygritte. You’re not.”“Oh.” Ygritte cupped his cheek with her hand. “You know nothing, Jon Snow,” she sighed, dying.

George R.R. Martin

Language is a bountiful gift and its usage, an elaboration of community and society, is a sacred work. Language and usage evolve over time: elements change, are reborn or forgotten, and while there are instances where transgression can become the source of an even greater wealth, this does not alter the fact that to become entitled to the liberties of playfulness or enlightened misuse of language, one must first and foremost have sworn one's total allegiance.

Muriel Barbery

At last everything was satisfactorily arranged, and I could not help admiring the setting: these mingled touches betrayed on a small scale the inspiration of a poet, the research of a scientist, the good taste of an artist, the gourmet’s fondness for good food, and the love of flowers, which concealed in their delicate shadows a hint of the love of women

August Strindberg

To think is an act of choice. The key to what you so recklessly call ‘human nature,’ the open secret you live with, yet dread to name, is the fact that man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct.

Ayn Rand

Pausing on the threshold, he looked in, conscious not so much of the few familiar sticks of furniture - the trucklebed, the worn strip of Brussels carpet, the chipped blue-banded ewer and basin, the framed illuminated texts on the walls - as of a perfect hive of abhorrent memories.That high cupboard in the corner, from which certain bodiless shapes had been wont to issue and stoop at him cowering out of his dreams; the crab-patterned paper that came alive as you stared; the window cold with menacing stars; the mouseholes, the rusty grate - trumpet of every wind that blows - these objects at once lustily shouted at him in their own original tongues.("Out Of The Deep")

Walter de la Mare

Well, you know, that was the worst of it - this suspicion of not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity - like yours - the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar.

Joseph Conrad

If you have the choice between humble and cocky, go with cocky. There's always time to be humble later, once you've been proven horrendously, irrevocably wrong.

Kinky Friedman

The trouble is Indians aren't used to being prosperous. We are more comfortable dealing with poverty- after all, poverty has been the staple here, and has been for many centuries.

Shobhaa Dé

One of my roommates, Rafael, he's an expert on monsters. Not that he talks about them. I can just tell. People who have monsters recognize each other. They know each other without even saying a word.

Benjamin Alire Sáenz

A woman never sees what we do for her she only sees what we don't do.

Georges Courteline

I think I possess because I do not try to give,Trying to give, I see that I have nothing.

René Daumal

Be good sweet maid and let who can be clever.

Charles Kingsley

He seems, in manner and rank, above the class of young men who take that turn; but I remember hearing them say, that the little theatre at Fairport was to open with the performance of a young gentleman, being his first appearance on any stage.—If this should be thee, Lovel!—Lovel? yes, Lovel or Belville are just the names which youngsters are apt to assume on such occasions—on my life, I am sorry for the lad.

Walter Scott

Age has no reality except in the physical world. The essence of a human being is resistant to the passage of time. Our inner lives are eternal, which is to say that our spirits remain as youthful and vigorous as when we were in full bloom. Think of love as a state of grace, not the means to anything, but the alpha and omega. An end in itself.

Gabriel García Márquez

What separates the best from the rest is just the attitude.

Shilpa Menon

A certain wise man once said that God didn't play dice with the universe, but that man was wrong. Sometimes I think He must even try Russian roulette.

Daína Chaviano

I hadn't even solved the mystery of my own body.

Benjamin Alire Sáenz

I had had the job for three weeks. It was dreary. You couldn't read; they didn't like it. I would feel as if I were drugged, sitting there, watching those damned dolls, thinking what a success they would have made of their lives if they had been women. Satin skin, silk hair, velvet eyes, sawdust heart - all complete.

Jean Rhys

[you’ll acquire] A certain amount of cynicism. This business works on you. When you were in law school you had some noble idea what a lawyer should be. A champion of individual rights; a defender of the Constitution; a guardian of the oppressed; an advocate for your client’s principles. Then after you practice for six months you realize you were nothing but hired guns. Mouthpieces for sale to the highest bidder, available to anybody, any crook, any sleazebag with enough money to pay your outrageous fees. Nothing shocks you. It’s supposed to be an honorable profession, but you’ll meet so many crooked lawyers you’ll want to quit and find an honest job. Yeah Mitch, you’ll get cynical. And it’s sad, really.

John Grisham

My house seems remarkably full of people," he observed. "Is it possible we were expected.

Georgette Heyer

If a man hasn't what's necessary to make a woman love him, it's his fault, not hers.

W Somerset Maugham

Patriotism is a myth conceived by those old rogues to draw us into the infernal game. Let them fight as they will, but we want no part of it.

Wilbur Smith

The passion of the collector when confronted with a rare item, the enthusiasm of a hunter who sees a fine, handsome beast, can give us no idea of the tremendous love of clothes in some women.

Benito Pérez Galdós

no one sleeps more beautifully than you. But i am afraid that you will waken just now, and touch me with an indifferent glance, lightly passing, and commit the murder of beauty.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko

A woman's weapon is her tongue.

Anthony Trollope

Paris was a universe whole and entire unto herself, hollowed and fashioned by history; so she seemed in this age of Napoleon III with her towering buildings, her massive cathedrals, her grand boulevards and ancient winding medieval streets--as vast and indestructible as nature itself. All was embraced by her, by her volatile and enchanted populace thronging the galleries, the theaters, the cafes, giving birth over and over to genius and sanctity, philosophy and war, frivolity and the finest art; so it seemed that if all the world outside her were to sink into darkness, what was fine, what was beautiful, what was essential might there still come to its finest flower. Even the majestic trees that graced and sheltered her streets were attuned to her--and the waters of the Seine, contained and beautiful as they wound through her heart; so that the earth on that spot, so shaped by blood and consciousness, had ceased to be the earth and had become Paris.

Anne Rice

Your soul is your inner being, your thinking, reasoning, loving, choosing inner being. Your capacity to stand up for what is right. Your capacity to fight against what is wrong. Your capacity to choose even to die for what you believe is right. That's your soul.

Anne Rice

It doesnot matter; there’s many a heavenly body in the lot crowding upon us ofa night that mankind had never heard of, it being outside the sphereof its activities and of no earthly importance to anybody but to theastronomers who are paid to talk learnedly about its composition,weight, path--the irregularities of its conduct, the aberrations of itslight--a sort of scientific scandal-mongering.

Joseph Conrad

Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.

W Somerset Maugham

She never opened her mail in the middle of the day. Sometimes she forgot about it for a week or more until people rang to complain. Nor did she check her answering machine messages. In fact, it had only been in the last year that she had finally bought an answering machine, and she steadfastly refused to have a mobile, to the incredulity of all those around her, who didn’t believe that people could actually function without one. But Frieda wanted to be able to escape from incessant communications and demands. She didn’t want to be at anyone’s beck and call, and she liked cutting herself off from the urgent inanities of the world. When she was on her own, she liked to be truly alone. Out of contact and adrift.

Nicci French

Remember: You are no one. You have no name. You do not speak, you do not look at them, you do not volunteer for anything. You work, bot not so hard they notice you. Gizela. Zytka. Your parents, Oskar and Mina. They are dead and gone now, Yanek, and we would grieve for them if we could. But we have only one purpose now: survive. Survive at all costs, Yanek. We cannot let these monsters tear us from the pages of the world.

Alan Gratz

Underneath an artist's preoccupations with sex, society, religion, etc. (all the staple abstractions that allow the forebrain to chatter) there is a soul tortured beyond endurance by the lack of tenderness in the world.

Lawrence Durrell

My optimism? Where I grew up our principal cultural expression was the funeral. Whatever keeps me going, it isn't optimism.

Robert Stone

The tragedy of life is that sometimes we get what we want.

W Somerset Maugham

The wolf blood, Arya remembered now. I'll be as strong as Robb, I said I would. She took a deep breath, then lifted the broomstick in both hands and brought down across her knee. It broke with a loud crack, and she threw the pieces aside. 'I am a direwolf, and done with the wooden teeth.

George R.R. Martin

I want a man who knows something about himself. And is appalled. And has to forgive himself to get along.

C.P. Snow

When she turned I could see her face was plain and outwardly unremarkable, yet possessing of a bearing that showed inner strength and resolve. I stared at her intently with a mixture of feelings. I had realised not long ago that I was no beauty, and even at the age of nine had seen how the more attractive children gained favour more easily. But here in that young woman I could see how those principles could be inverted. I felt myself stand more upright and clench my jaw in subconscious mimicry of her pose

Jasper Fforde

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