It goes without saying that a good Catholic novel should be good craftsmanship, good writing skills. The creative person must always be engaged in the long labor of perfecting the tools of his art. Yet the work itself need not be explicitly evangelic...
Movie making is not like other art forms, like painting, or writing a novel, because that can be digested or interpreted... It takes two years to make each one of these, and it's always judged on money.
There is a safety mechanism in place [to ensure the perambulator doesn't turn back into a purse with a baby in it] : if anything weighing more than a pound and a half-about the weight of a three-volume novel-is in the carriage of the perambulator, it...
Then the crying started. First one child, a little girl called Jen from across the street, then another, then another, until the June afternoon sounded like a vacation in hell.
Why was I standing on the street when the window feel out of the building? Why did the bus run over me? Because it was my turn in the barrel, that's why.
You move forward. You face up to your challenges. You don't retreat. You're young, and sometimes you'll wish you could. But don't.
The meaning did not precede the dream; the dream preceded the meaning. So the way to read the tale is to let the imagination carry one along. Not, above all, as a rebus to be decoded.
Show Holmes a drop of water and he would deduce the existence of the Atlantic. Show it to me and I would look for a tap. That was the difference between us.
A man typically lights a scene too much, because it makes no matter what you show, a man always wants to see more. A woman understands darkness and shadows
Gordon eyed them with inert hatred. At this moment he hated all books, and novels most of all. Horrible to think of all that soggy, half-baked trash massed together in one place.
I had a dream. In the dream someone was critical of my newest novel The Snail's Castle. I said, "don't worry about it. If you don't like it, just throw it out the window." I awoke, grinning, with a wonderful feeling of freedom.
Every novel has at least three stories. Of course, there’s story in its pages. But then there’s the story of its writing. And there’s also the story of its reaching, or not reaching, the bigger world of its readers.
How long y' think it'll take t'git that wild streak out im?" "Well, Brother Tiggins, that'll depend on how long he can weather the leather.
I only had the right to sit in the shadows of the world,in complete silence. Whether I was laughed at, or told I was discusting, or thought of as unpleasant I would sit in the shadows.
I'll go further and say she was one of the best cooks in the world! The compimentary expression, "This food will make you slap yo' Aint Emma" was apt in her case.
Restraining, saving, assuring your checkbook balance...what does all taht amount to? If I go broke one day I'll just take out loans
One thinks of the failure of representation since 9/11, the proliferation of novels, the media glut, the surfeit of images that somehow slide too easily into a banal repertoire, commodified shock.
To begin with, I had never done any good deeds; besides, even if I had simply fabricated a few, I would not have enjoyed going on about them.
For a full two hours, he stood at that door, a cloud of uncertainty ruling his mind. Damian felt like his heart was about to burst. Could she love him? Was it really true?
His eyes danced like a teenager. "Eat anyone alive today?" her father joked. Ruby returned his wicked grin and sauntered into the living room. "Not today, but tomorrow's another day.
To read a novel is to wonder constantly, even at moments when we lose ourselves most deeply in the book: How much of this is fantasy, and how much is real?
