Novelist

Explore 912 quotes by Novelists

Sort

None among us is superman enough to escape kitsch completely. No matter how we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition.

Milan Kundera

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Buy The Unbearable Lightness of Being at Amazon Buy The Unbearable Lightness of Being at Amazon

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Medium

Language

Time

Authentication Score 3

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Original Citation

Kundera, Milan. L'insoutenable légèreté de l'être [The Unbearable Lightness of Being]. Gallimard, 1984.

Original citation text copied to clipboard.

Current Citation

Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, translated by Michael Henry Heim. Harper Perennial, 2009.

Current citation text copied to clipboard.

We wove a web in childhood,
A web of sunny air;
We dug a spring in infancy
Of water pure and fair;
We sowed in youth a mustard seed,
We cut an almond rod;
We are now grown up to riper age —
Are they withered in the sod?

Charlotte Brontë

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Medium

Statement Type

Language

Time

Authentication Score 1

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Original Citation

Brontë, Charlotte. "We wove a web in childhood." 1835.

Original citation text copied to clipboard.

Current Citation

Brontë, Charlotte. "From 'Retrospection.'" Brontës: Selected Poems, edited by Pamela Norris. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2023.

Current citation text copied to clipboard.

It was one of those events which at a crucial stage in one's development arrive to challenge and stretch one to the limit of one's ability and beyond, so that thereafter one has a new standard by which to judge oneself.

Kazuo Ishiguro

The Remains of the Day

Buy The Remains of the Day at Amazon Buy The Remains of the Day at Amazon

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Medium

Language

Time

Authentication Score 3

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

Ishiguro, Kazuo. The Remains of the Day. Faber & Faber, 1989.

Citation text copied to clipboard.

The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him.

Gustave Flaubert

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Medium

Language

Time

Authentication Score 3

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Original Citation

Flaubert, Gustave. Letter to Madamoiselle Leroyer de Chantepie. 18 Mar. 1857.

Original citation text copied to clipboard.

Current Citation

Flaubert, Gustave. The Letters of Gustave Flaubert 1830-1857, translated and edited by Francis Steegmuller. Faber and Faber, 1981.

Current citation text copied to clipboard.

Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog.

Roald Dahl

Matilda

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Medium

Genre

Language

Time

Authentication Score 3

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

Dahl, Roald. Matilda. Viking Kestrel, 1988.

Citation text copied to clipboard.

Without the cold war, what's the point of being an American?

John Updike

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Medium

Language

Time

Authentication Score 3

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

Updike, John. Rabbit at Rest. Alfred A. Knopf, 1990, ch. 3.

Citation text copied to clipboard.

When in doubt have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.

Raymond Chandler

Buy The Simple Art of Murder Buy The Simple Art of Murder

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Medium

Statement Type

Language

Time

Authentication Score 0

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

Chandler, Raymond. "The Simple Art of Murder." Saturday Review of Literature, 15 Apr. 1950, introduction.

Citation text copied to clipboard.

There was no patriotism in the trenches. It was too remote a sentiment, and rejected as fit only for civilians.

Robert Graves

Goodbye to All That

There are no other quotes from this source in the Bon Mots database.

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Genre

Language

Time

Authentication Score 3

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

Graves, Robert. Good-Bye to All That. Jonathan Cape, 1929.

Citation text copied to clipboard.

The utmost renown never slakes a man's appetite and, unless he is a fool, he almost always dies uncertain of his own fame.

Gustave Flaubert

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Medium

Language

Time

Authentication Score 2

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Original Citation

Flaubert, Gustave. Letter to Maxime Du Camp. 26 June 1852.

Original citation text copied to clipboard.

Current Citation

Flaubert, Gustave. Letters of Gustave Flaubert, edited by Richard Rumbold, translated by J. M. Cohen. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1950.

Current citation text copied to clipboard.

War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading.

Thomas Hardy

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Medium

Language

Time

Authentication Score 2

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

Hardy, Thomas. The Dynasts. Vol. 1, MacMillan & Co., 1904, pt. 1, act 1, sc. 5.

Citation text copied to clipboard.

Women are really much nicer than men:
No wonder we like them.

Kingsley Amis

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Medium

Language

Time

Authentication Score 1

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

Amis, Kingsley. "A Bookshop Idyll." A Case of Samples: Poems 1946–1956. Gollancz, 1956.

Citation text copied to clipboard.

I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it.

William Faulkner

Quoted in Paris Review

More information about this quote

Topic

Speaker

Source

Medium

Language

Time

Authentication Score 3

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

Faulkner, William. "William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12." Interviewed by Jean Stein. Paris Review, Spring 1956.

Citation text copied to clipboard.

An accident of timing makes the book in question indelible.

Colson Whitehead

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Medium

Language

Time

Authentication Score 3

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

Whitehead, Colson. "The Hum Inside the Skull, Revisited." The New York Times, 16 Jan. 2005.

Citation text copied to clipboard.

Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.

W. Somerset Maugham

Of Human Bondage

Buy Of Human Bondage at Amazon Buy Of Human Bondage at Amazon

Read Of Human Bondage at Project Gutenberg

More information about this quote

Topic

Speaker

Author

Source

Medium

Language

Time

Authentication Score 3

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Original Citation

Maugham, William Somerset. Of Human Bondage. George H. Doran Company, 1915, ch. 51.

Original citation text copied to clipboard.

Current Citation

Maugham, William Somerset. Of Human Bondage. Signet, 2007, ch. 51.

Current citation text copied to clipboard.

That's the part of it I always liked. He adjusted himself to beams falling, and then no more of them fell, and he adjusted himself to them not falling.

Dashiell Hammett

Black Mask

Buy The Maltese Falcon at Amazon Buy The Maltese Falcon at Amazon

Read The Maltese Falcon at Project Gutenberg

More information about this quote

Topic

Speaker

Author

Source

Medium

Genre

Language

Time

Authentication Score 3

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Original Citation

Hammett, Dashiell. "The Maltese Falcon." Black Mask, Sept. 1929 - Jan. 1930. Serial.

Original citation text copied to clipboard.

Current Citation

Hammett, Dashiell. "The Maltese Falcon." The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, Red Harvest. Everyman's Library, 2000, ch. 7.

Current citation text copied to clipboard.

A man shouldn't fool with booze until he's fifty; then he's a damn fool if he doesn't.

William Faulkner

More information about this quote

Topic

Speaker

Language

Time

Authentication Score 3

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

Faulkner, William. Quoted in William Faulkner of Oxford, written and edited by James M. Webb and A. Wigfall Green. Louisiana State University Press, 1965.

Citation text copied to clipboard.

It is by crawling on the face of it that one learns a country.

Evelyn Waugh

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Genre

Language

Time

Authentication Score 3

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

Waugh, Evelyn. Ninety-two Days. Duckworth, 1934, ch. 8.

Citation text copied to clipboard.

Falling in love is the one illogical adventure, the one thing of which we are tempted to think as supernatural, in our trite and reasonable world.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Read Virginibus Puerisque at Project Gutenberg

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Medium

Language

Time

Authentication Score 2

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Original Citation

Stevenson, Robert Louis. "Virginibus Puerisque III: On Falling in Love." Virginibus Puerisque, and Other Papers. London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1881.

Original citation text copied to clipboard.

Current Citation

Stevenson, Robert Louis. "On Falling in Love." Essays I: Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers, edited by Robert-Louis Abrahamson. Edinburgh University Press, 2018.

Current citation text copied to clipboard.