What changes when a woman marries? What does a woman lose and what does she gain? For Abishag, marrying king David gave her instant status. As a wife, impugning Abishag's character meant a swift death. As a wife, she inspired fear. What changes when ...
A man's magic demonstrates what sort of person he is, what is held most deeply inside of him. There is no truer gauge of a man's character than the way in which he employs his strength, his power. I was not a murderer. I was not like Victor Sells. I ...
Redwing had read somewhere that one of his favourite writers, Ernest Hemingway, had been asked what was the best training for a novelist. He had said “an unhappy childhood.” Redwing had enjoyed a fine time growing up, but he wondered if this whol...
Adrien Bach, main character from The Maker: You know, when you’re a kid, you think you’re going to grow up to be something special, do something important. You’re not going to be a regular Joe like everybody else. But then you get out there and...
But suspense presupposes uncertainty. No matter how nightmarish the situation, real suspense is impossible when we know in advance that the protagonist will prevail (as we would if Woolrich had used series characters) or will be destroyed. This is wh...
No, it was simply that I was uninterested in making, as I saw it, a Xerox of some old emotional state. I was in my mid-thirties, with a marriage more or less behind me. I was no longer vulnerable to curiosity's enormous momentum. I had nothing new to...
Occasionally, very occasionally, say at four o’clock in the afternoon on a wet Sunday, she feels panic-stricken and almost breathless with loneliness. Once or twice she has been known to pick up the phone to check that it isn’t broken. Sometimes ...
If writers only dared to dare, a Suetonius or a Tacitus of the Novel could exist, for the Novel is essentially the history of manners, turned into a story and a play, as is History itself often enough. And there is no other difference than this: that...
I have undertaken, you see, to write not only my life, but my opinions also; hoping and expecting that your knowledge of my character, and of what kind of a mortal I am, by the one, would give you a better relish for the other: As you proceed further...
Reg: Speaking of blunt, dinner is on my bill tonight, mes amis. Alex: What's the occasion? Augustus: Lady Caroline's agreed to venture out on a picnic with out intrepid hero. Kit: I don't know why you keep insisting she's smitten with me. I've barely...
Who are we without our addictions; without our media-induced hungers? So often the voices we hear echoing in our mind are not our own but that of our influencers. Isolation, while arguably going against human nature, is essential for mental and emoti...
I’ve got to get my body back. While I like wearing you, I’d rather wear you as a blanket on top of me and not the skin I’m walking around in. It has this whole Hannibal Lecter aspect that’s really creeping me out.”Jo “Hannibal Lecter?” ...
Study history, Alleluia. In this century history stopped paying attention to the old psychological orientation of reality. I mean, these days, character isn't destiny any more. Economics is destiny. Ideology is destiny. Bombs are destiny. What does a...
Though I adore the idea of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Sandman, the Tooth Fairy, and such luminary characters—especially their altruism and devotion—I still don't believe in them. For I know the truth. Only one such miracle worker exists ...
The flimsy little protestations that mark the front gate of every novel, the solemn statements that any resemblance to real persons living or dead is entirely coincidental, are fraudulent every time. A writer has no other material to make his people ...
There is nothing so difficult to arrive at as the nature and personality of one's parents. Death, about which so much mystery is made,is perhaps no mystery at all. But the history of one's parents has to be pieced together from fragments, their motiv...
Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of character, had praised it as somethin...
Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot's character; vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably handsome in his youth; and, at fifty-four, was still a very fine man. Few women could think more of their personal appear...
It is passing strange that our philosophers of the Revolutionary period should have formed their conception of a free society by reference to societies where everyone was not free - where, in fact, the vast majority were not free. It is no less stran...
She was a fascinating character, to say the least. A pioneer and instigator of many weird and wooly projects and who liked to “instigate” you right along with her. Every village has one, and Doris was ours. A lively individual who was always thro...
... there are other proud people who have low self-esteem. They feel they haven't lived up to their potential. They feel unworthy. They want to hide and disappear, to fade into the background and nurse their own hurts. We don't associate them with pr...
