Quotes by Novelists - Page 20

This could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea interpenetrate, so to speak—the sea entering into the life of most men, and the men knowing something or everything about the sea, in the way of amusement, of travel, or of bread-winning.

Joseph Conrad

We are all very much alike in France in this respect; we still remain knights, knights of love and fortune, since God has been abolished whose bodyguard we really were. But nobody can ever get woman out of our hearts; there she is, and there she will remain, and we love her, and shall continue to love her, and go on committing all kinds of follies on her account as long as there is a France on the map of Europe; and even if France were to be wiped off the map, there would always be Frenchmen left.

Guy de Maupassant

Humans were still not only the cheapest robots around, but also, for many tasks, the only robots that could do the job. They were self-reproducing robots too. They showed up and worked generation after generation; give them 3000 calories a day and a few amenities, a little time off, and a strong jolt of fear, and you could work them at almost anything. Give them some ameliorative drugs and you had a working class, reified and coglike.

Kim Stanley Robinson

The two women sat by the fire, tilting their glasses and drinking in small peaceful sips. The lamplight shone upon the tidy room and the polished table, lighting topaz in the dandelion wine, spilling pools of crimson through the flanks of the bottle of plum gin. It shone on the contented drinkers, and threw their large, close-at-hand shadows upon the wall. When Mrs Leak smoothed her apron the shadow solemnified the gesture as though she were moulding an universe. Laura's nose and chin were defined as sharply as the peaks peaks on a holly leaf.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Cases of typhoid take the following course:When the fever is at its height, life calls out to the patient: calls out to him as he wanders in his distant dream, and summons him in no uncertain voice. The harsh, imperious call reaches the spirit on that remote path that leads into the shadows, the coolness and peace. He hears the call of life, the clear, fresh, mocking summons to return to that distant scene which he had already left so far behind him, and already forgotten. And there may well up in him something like a feeling of same for a neglected duty; a sense of renewed energy, courage, and hope; he may recognize a bond existing still between him and that stirring, colourful, callous existence which he thought he had left so far behind him. Then, how far he may have wandered on his distant path, he will turn back--and live. But if he shudders when he hears life's voice, if the memory of that vanished scene and the sound of that lusty summons make him shake his head, make him put out his hand to ward off as he flies forward in the way of escape that has opened to him--then it is clear that the patient will die." Buddenbrooks

Thomas Mann

...her very kindness was cruel because it was founded not on love but on reason...

W Somerset Maugham

And if an increasingly pluralistic America ever decides to commission a new motto, I’m open for business, because I’ve got a better one than E pluribus unum. Tu dormis, tu perdis . . . You snooze, you lose.

Paul Beatty

Everyone wanted to see [him] fall so they could devour his remains. As is usually the case, the army of sycophants had turned into a horde of hungry hyenas

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

There is one purpose to life and one only: to bear witness to and understand as much as possible of the complexity of the world -- its beauty, its mysteries, its riddles. The more you understand, the more you look, the greater is your enjoyment of life and your sense of peace. That's all there is to it. Everything else is fun and games. If an activity is not grounded in "to love" or "to learn" it does not have value.

Anne Rice

A total stranger, and one not of one's sex, is often the least prejudiced judge.

John Fowles

Ann put the oven to heat. She washed the lamb under the tap, turning it around to clean the entire leg. Then it was dried with a paper towel, stretched out on the cutting board to be hammered flat, and rubbed with salt and rosemary she took from the kitchen window. She waited for the oven to reach two hundred. The cleaned scent of the meat and the clatter of the water in the skink, the branches of rosemary, the dogs finding each other’s ears in the evening, the children being called indoors, servants standing on the road for the Indian bus, and the rising heat of the oven against the remaining heat of the day made her aware of her own happiness. This happiness was like the sea wind when the temperature of the water and the land reversed and everything was free in new darkness.

Imraan Coovadia

Your brother Jaime keeps losing battles. He gave Sansa an angry look, as if it were her fault. He’s been taken by the Starks and we’ve lost Riverrun and now her stupid brother is calling himself a king.The dwarf smiled crookedly. “All sorts of people are calling themselves kings these days.

George R.R. Martin

To demand 'sense' is the hallmark of nonsense. Nature does not make sense. Nothing makes sense.

Ayn Rand

All that which proceeds from man’s independent ego is good. All that which proceeds from man’s dependence upon men is evil.

Ayn Rand

But if Frederica was aware of my sentiments, and begged Cousin Alverstoke to intervene—!” She shuddered, and clasped her hands tensely together. “You see, he could, Harry! He could arrange for Endymion to be sent abroad, for instance, and then I think I should die. Oh, my dear brother, there’s no one to help us but you, and I count on your support!

Georgette Heyer

In the course of crime ... the descent is rapid.

Frederick Marryat

And at once he sacrificed everything to it, if it can be said we ever sacrifice anything save what we know we can never attain, or what some secret wisdom tells us it would be uncomfortable or saddening to possess.

Thornton Wilder

There is no point in expending good money on the pursuit of an engine that can power aircraft without propellers. What is wrong with airships anyway? They have borne mankind aloft for over a hundred relatively accident-free years and I see no reason to impugn their popularity...

Jasper Fforde

It had ever, as I told the reader, been one of the singular blessings of my life, to be almost every hour of it miserably in love with some one....

Laurence Sterne

First time my master’s in English literature ever proved useful.

Anne Rice

As for her, I'd forgotten her for the moment. So I shall never understand why, suddenly, bewilderingly, I was certain that everything I had imagined to be truth was false. False. Only the magic and the dream are true—all the rest's a lie. Let it go. Here is the secret. Here.

Jean Rhys

I want history to jump on Canada's spine with sharp skates.

Leonard Cohen

Heaven would be Hell in no time if every cruel, selfish, vicious soul went to Heaven.

Anne Rice

... Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

My opinion is a view I hold until... well until I find something that changes it.

Luigi Pirandello

Then one day a thought clicked my mind... and even theweirdest event in the past start Making complete sense...

shivangi lavaniya

One day, I shall explode like an artillery shell and all my bits will be found on the writing table.

Gustave Flaubert

He tried not to laugh, but he wasn't good at controlling all the laughter that lived inside of him.

Benjamin Alire Sáenz

To succeed is nothing-it's an accident. But to feel no doubts about oneself is something very different: it is character.

Marie Leneru

We both liked children; we just didn't want any ourselves. There were children everywhere, and we saw no reason to start our own brand. Young couples plunge into parenthood and about half the time they end up with some ghastly problem on their hands. We thought we'd leave that to others.

Thomas McGuane

Love is the bane of honor, the death of duty.

George R.R. Martin

I said, "Where's all that delivering God's supposed to do?"He snorted. "You're right, the only deliverance is the one we get for ourselves. The Lord doesn't have any hands and feet but ours.""That doesn't say much for the Lord.""It doesn't say much for us, either.

Sue Monk Kidd

Beneath beautiful appearances I search out ugly depths, and beneath ignoble surfaces I probe for the hidden mines of devotion and virtue. It's a relatively benign mania, which enables you to see something new in a place where you would not have expected to find it.

Gustave Flaubert

In the seven years or so that had passed since I had last seen him, Sir Magnus Donners had grown not so much older in appearance, as less like a human being.

Anthony Powell

When several creatures, men or animals, have worked together to overcome something offering resistance and have at last succeeded, there follows often a pause, as though they felt the propriety of paying respect to the adversary who has put up so good a fight. The great tree falls, splitting, cracking, rushing down in leaves to the final, shuddering blow along the ground. Then the foresters are silent, and do not at once sit down. After hours, the deep snowdrift has been cleared and the lorry is ready to take the men home out of the cold. But they stand a while, leaning on their spades and only nodding unsmilingly as the car-drivers go through, waving their thanks.

Richard Adams

I felt for the first time, maybe ever, how much harder it was to be the adults. And I wasn't sure I could do that when it was my turn.

Barbara Hall

Justice without strength isn't justice at all.

Shinjirou

Na ca mi-a slabit vederea. Te rogi atata timp sa ti se arate Dumnezeu si cand ai ajuns langa El, nu-L mai vezi.

Marin Sorescu

Literature is like a subtle concoction of laboriously collected peripherals called words, intellect,thoughts,imagination,creativity and aestheticism brewed together to form a resplendent work of art.

Shilpa Sandesh

No, not rich. I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing.

Gabriel García Márquez

When I was her age," Munro said to Eilidh, "I was chasing frogs."Oron Chuckled. "When I was your age, I was chasing frogs. Come. We have things to discuss.

India Drummond

Babbit was an average father. He was affectionate, bullying, opinionated, ignorant, and rather wistful. Like most parents he enjoyed the game of waiting till the victim was clearly wrong, then virtuously pouncing.

Sinclair Lewis

nothing wrong with a lie or two when the situation demanded it

Sue Grafton

An imperfect human heart, perfectly shattered, was her conclusion. A condition so common as to be virtually universal, rendering issues of right and wrong almost incidental.

Richard Russo

We all knew there was a good deal of pointlessness to nearly all the meetings and in fact one meeting out of every three or four was nearly perfectly without gain or purpose but many meetings revealed the one thing that was necessary and so we attended them and afterward we thanked each other.

Joshua Ferris

Her only shame was that she felt none.

Nicholas Evans

Have I ever said that Turner once actually had himself lashed to the mast of a ship, to be able to later do a painting of a storm? Which has never failed to remind me of the scene in which Odysseus does the identical thing, of course, so that he can listen to the Sirens singing but will stay put.

David Markson

No medicine cures what happiness cannot.

Gabriel García Márquez

Well, it is very odd of you to threaten to throw your friends out of the window, I must say," remarked Juliana.He smiled. "Not at all. It is only my friends that I would throw out of the window.""Dear me!" said Juliana, finding the male sex incomprehensible.-Chapter XIII

Georgette Heyer

Romance is very pretty in novels, but the romance of a life is always a melancholy matter. They are most happy who have no story to tell.

Anthony Trollope

His sadness was of the kind that is patient and without hope.

William Maxwell

By trying to understand everything, everything makes me dream

Gustave Flaubert

Why has no one come to pry me out of here?- Cersei

George R.R. Martin

And what constitutes evil, real evil, is the taking of a single human life. Whether a man would die tomorrow or the day after or eventually... it doesn't matter. Because if God does not exist, then life... every second of it... Is all we have.

Anne Rice

It takes two to make a very great career: the man who is great, and the man--almost rarer--who is great enough to see greatness and say so.

Ayn Rand

I found myself in a sea in which the waves of joy and sorrow were clashing against each other.

Naguib Mahfouz

He'll be down with the books. My old septon used to say books are dead men talking. Dead men should keep quiet is what I say. No one wants to hear a dead man's yabber.

George R.R. Martin

There are two kinds of people. One kind, you can just tell by looking at them at what point they congealed into their final selves. It might be a very nice self, but you know you can expect no more suprises from it. Whereas, the other kind keep moving, changing... They are fluid. They keep moving forward and making new trysts with life, and the motion of it keeps them young. In my opinion, they are the only people who are still alive. You must be constantly on your guard against congealing.

Gail Godwin

I take no pride in hopeless longing; I wouldn't hold a stillborn aspiration. I'd want to have it, to make it, to live it.

Ayn Rand

When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk

Chinua Achebe

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