quotes by Novelist Quotes

“What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.”

“We are most alive when we're in love.”

“If one could only say just once: 'this is clear', all would be saved”

“There is not one in a hundred of either sex who is not taken in when they marry.”

“The wealth that cannot be administered is a burden.”

“Her mind was all disorder. The past, present, future, every thing was terrible.”

“I was blown up while we were eating cheese.”

“I would like to take the great DiMaggio fishing," the old man said. "They say his father was a fisherman. Maybe he was as poor as we are and would understand.”

“I have no wish to take life, not even human life”

“No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?”

“There was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery.”

“Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.”

“but she realized that she wanted him to know her. She wanted him to understand her, if only because she had strange sense that he was the kind of man she could fall in love with, even if she didn't want to.”

“A state of affairs which leads to daily vexation is not the right state.”

“Please tell me what can I do. There must be something I can do”

“In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected.”

“To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her.”

“Only through suffering can we find ourselves.”

“There was the same dazzling red glare. The sea gasped for air with each shallow, stifled wave that broke on the sand. ...with every blade of light that flashed off the sand, from a bleached shell or a peice of broken glass, my jaws tightened. I walked for a long time.”

“All truths are old, and all that we have to do is recognize and utter them anew.”

“Clover was a stout motherly mare approaching middle life, who had never quite got her figure back after her fourth foal.”

“Our artistic heroes tend to be those self-exercisers, like Picasso, and Nabokov, and Wallace Stevens, who rather defiantly kept playing past dark.”

“Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many - not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”

“The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody.”

“Why should anybody be interested in some old man who was a failure?”

“It is quite beyond me how anyone can believe God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not directly reveal to us our relationship to it, if our hearts fail to tell us what we owe ourselves and others, we shall assuredly not learn it from books, which are at best designed but to give names to our errors.”

“...and her mother had been a great beauty who cared only to go to parties and amuse herself with gay parties.”

“There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.”

“I mean, if the relationship can't survive the long term, why on earth would it be worth my time and energy for the short term?”

“Cheerfulness and contentment are great beautifiers, and are famous preservers of good looks.”

“Mrs. Lammle's manner changed under the poor silly girl's embraces, and she turned extremely pale: directing one appealing look, first to Mrs. Boffin, and then to Mr. Boffin. Both understood her instantly, with a more delicate subtlety than much better educated people, whose perception came less directly from the heart, could have brought to bear upon the case.”

“I sometimes need to write things which I cannot completely control but which therefore prove that what is in me is stronger than I am.”

“I lay it down as a general rule, Harriet, that if a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him.”

“As all Nature's thousands changes But one changeless God proclaim; So in Art's wide kingdom ranges One sole meaning still the same: This is Truth, eternal Reason, Which from Beauty takes its dress, And serene through time and season Stands aye in loveliness.”

“The day is for mistake and error, sequence of time for success and carrying out. The one who anticipates is master of the day.”

“Many men are deeply moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look of pain for a sign of constancy or of love.”

“If those who are the enemies of innocent amusements had the direction of the world, they would take away the spring, and youth, the former from the year, the latter from human life.”

“A man must take the fat with the lean.”

“Weeds are omnipresent; errors are to be found in the heart of the most lovable.”

“Who doesn't desire his fathers death?”

“The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.”

“My worthy friend, gray are all theoriesAnd green alone Life's golden tree.”

“I do not find it easy to talk to people I don't know.”

“La ve rite , comme la lumie' re, aveugle. Le mensonge, au contraire, est un beau cre puscule qui met chaque objet en valeur. Truth, like light, blinds. A lie, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight which shows the value of each object.”

“[You write out of the] desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, etc., etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive and a strong one.”

“All I know is that I fell in love with you, and I've never been more frightened about anything in my entire life.”

“You know the real me," she said, stopping to peer up at him. "More than anyone else.”

“To appreciate the noble is a gain which can never be torn from us.”

“It would be like describing colors to someone blind from birth: The words might be understood, but the concept would remain mysterious and private.”

“At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures - be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.”