Famous Quotes & Sayings

Sinclair Lewis

There are two insults no human being will endure: that he has no sense of humor, and that he has never known trouble.

Orhan Pamuk

The opponents of this process have always tried to vilify westernization as a poor imitation.

Orhan Pamuk

At first my publisher had reservations about publishing it in the form you are familiar with.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

We have to believe in free-will. We've got no choice.

Caleb Carr

I feel horribly vindicated. Three thousand people died who didn't have to die.

Caleb Carr

I'm still a firm believer that we were definitely put here to use our minds, and that is what makes us different. And that that's the key. If there is anything that is going to stop mankind from being such a beastly, destructive creature, it is reason.

Margaret Mitchell

There ain't nothing from the outside that can lick any of us.

Margaret Mitchell

Until you have lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is.

The more interesting the 9-to-5 work is, the more it takes away from my real work, which is writing.

Richard Bach

An idea is never given to you without you being given the power to make it reality. You must, nevertheless, suffer for it.

Diane Johnson

A novel's whole pattern is rarely apparent at the outset of writing, or even at the end; that is when the writer finds out what a novel is about, and the job becomes one of understanding and deepening or sharpening what is already written. That is finding the theme.

Jonathan Franzen

's one of the perversities of the age: I'm embarrassed by its success, but I'm happy it's selling.

Ellen Glasgow

Some women like to sit down with trouble as if it were knitting.

Russell Baker writes columns as a poet writes light verse - with tongue in cheek and a steady hand.

John Updike

Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.

Leo Rosten

Courage is the capacity to confirm what can be imagined.

Gore Vidal

Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an I.Q. of 60.

Donna Tartt

There's also a bit of family echo in the character of Harriet. Harriet is kind of a recurring state of mind in my mother's side of the family.

Donna Tartt

There's an expectation these days that novels - like any other consumer product - should be made on a production line, with one dropping from the conveyor belt every couple of years.

It's not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

Barbara Kingsolver

It's surprising how much of memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.

John Barth

This is an exciting time. A new chapter in our history.

Rick Moody

This is odd, but there are certain things that are really embarrassing to talk about - one is my job and the success that I've had in it, and the other is money.

Orhan Pamuk

At some point they figured out that you can win elections with a pro-European policy because the voters hope this will improve their lives.

Serge Lang

Aside from all that, we recall that antibodies to malaria and other diseases prevalent in Africa show up as HIV-positive on tests.

Jerry B. Jenkins

Actually SOON has more than the Left Behind series, but I really believe less is more.

Danielle Steel

Sometimes, if you aren't sure about something, you have to just jump off the bridge and grow wings on your way down.

Gloria Naylor

I don't believe that life is supposed to make you feel good, or make you feel miserable either. Life is just supposed to make you feel.

Edmund White

There was a certain hum that would be generated by the book when I was writing well; I'd stop working the instant that hum snapped off.

As in The Lime Twig dream and illusion are right at the center of Charivari.

Robert Ludlum

That gentleman will call the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I think they're scared of him. They're merely professional killers; he's in advertising!

Ernest Hemingway

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are stronger at the broken places.

I used to carry about with me a German map-case filled with poems.