Famous Quotes & Sayings

Tom Verlaine

I just got a letter from a guy in Japan. One of them somehow found out where I lived one day and came up to my house and knocked on my door.

I didn't for a moment doubt the choice, but if life is ever fearsome, it is truly fearsome then.

I didn't know what kind of jobs, because how was I prepared? At best, I would be an AB in English.

I want prose fiction to be recognized as that, and I'm not interested in writing as it becomes more personal.

Ernest Hemingway

The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.

Andrew Niccol

The U.S. is by far the biggest exporter of arms in the world. It was true during the Clinton administration, and it's true during the Bush administration. It's bipartisan.

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.

Mary Grandpre

It's like a candy store for an illustrator, I connected with Harry pretty quickly and loved the way J.K. described everything; she's such a visually thinking person. You can't pass that up.

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.

Edmund White

I quickly discovered that I wrote best when I had an audience to read out loud to soon after the completion of my latest, hottest pages.

Sue Grafton

I read newspapers, textbooks on crime. I talk to private investigators, police officers, jail administrators, doctors, lawyers, career criminals.

I'm only interested in fiction that in some way or other voices the very imagination which is conceiving it.

Scott Turow

If life's lessons could be reduced to single sentences, there would be no need for fiction.

Caleb Carr

I haven't always done things this way. It's the nature of the two books. They have been so consuming that I end up living inside them.

Orhan Pamuk

The first edition was 100,000 copies, a huge economic risk for the publisher. I was quite proud of the fact that the book was not banned or censored.

Mark Helprin

The greatest fight is when you are fighting in the smoke and cannot see with your eyes.

William Styron

A good book should leave you... slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.

Ernest Hemingway

All things truly wicked start from an innocence.

Ellen Glasgow

All change is not growth; all movement is not forward.

Edmund White

The first version of The Beautiful Room Is Empty was the first mss. I'd ever submitted to New York editors.

Rick Moody

You don't have these perfectly transparent, simple thoughts. You have thoughts that are all cluttered up, like overused bookshelves.

Donna Tartt

The trick of creating character is to try to see all people, even unsympathetic ones, without projecting one's own personality and values on them.

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.