Tucking my nose into a book makes me completely oblivious to my surroundings. I would have made a terrible spy in the army--the first person to hand me a novel would have been able to shoot my head clean off without me noticing.
Jane Austen's narrative style seems to me to show (especially in the later novels) a curiously chameleon-like faculty; it varies in colour as the habits of expression of the several characters impress themselves on the relation of the episode in whic...
It is sometimes the minor, not the major, characters in a novel who hold the author's affection longest. It may be that one loses affection for the major characters because they suck off so much energy as one pushes them through their lives.
Uh oh, maybe I’m hysterical. No, the look on his face had been so funny. Did he really think to kiss me into submission? That shit might work in romance novels, but not on me. If he wants to kiss me he’ll have to earn that privilege again.
Can we all pause a moment to appreciate the artistry of that sentence? "Sitting casually on the floor, a guard sat..." That's freaking art right there! Someone nominate this thing for the Hugo Award already!
The novel comes from a long shamanic tradition wherein the shaman-storyteller himself is transformed, no longer storyteller but a character, an animal, a god, a goddess, or a natural force that is not his everyday identity. And these moments, when th...
It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are...
The progress of the friendship between Catherine and Isabella was quick as its beginning had been warm...and if a rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and dirt, and shut themselves up...
Finally, when all was said and done, the certainty (so often experienced, yet always new) that female charms, the kind that inflame the senses, are no more than kitchen smells: they tease you when you're hungry and disgust you when you've had your fi...
Welcome to His poem. His play. His novel. Skip the bowls of fruit and statues. Let the page flick your thumbs. This is His spoken word.
She'd obviously read the book many times before, and so she read flawlessly and confidently, and I could hear her smile in the reading of it, and the sound of that smile made me think that maybe I would like novels better if Alaska Young read them to...
Why are you behaving like this? You know how much I love you … and I believe you love me as much, so why are you avoiding me?
«She had Google, and she had Wikipedia. She could look up anything obscure, any words or phrases that she didn’t understand. A romance novel was just a book, while the Internet was the Internet. The Internet would crack these nuts for sure.»
Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and fall into a vortex, as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace.
I’m a miner, and I’m always dirty, because I’m constantly digging. Am I shoveling for gold? Hardly. I’m unearthing this hearty land searching for the next great American novel. If I dig deep enough, I’m sure to find it.
Then you look at her and smile a smile your dissembling face will remember until the day you die. Baby, you say, baby, this is part of my novel. This is how you lose her.
Sharing our story is one way we create intimacy. And like a good novel, it’s more engaging – and lasting – when we allow it to gradually unfold.
Time flies. Time flies faster every year. Time flies whether you're having fun or not, whether you're living your life big or small, whether you surround yourself with fear or laughter.
I’m writing a book, one letter at a time. After thirteen days, I just finished writing “Once upon a time.” Since it’s a fairy tale, it’s obviously a romance novel, along the lines of “All Quiet on the Western Front.
I would eat my soup in silence, but it’s alphabet soup. They’re all capital letters and they are shouting at me. I’m not anorexic or illiterate, so alphabet soup is like a nourishing novel. An anorexic should make a suicide note out of the lett...
I love you and I will until the end of time.And just as she said the words, two bright stars drifted past them overhead and disappeared into the night sky together…
