Novelist

Explore 912 quotes by Novelists

Alcohol is like love...The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off.

Raymond Chandler

The Long Goodbye

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Topic

Alcoholism Alcohol Drinking

Speaker

Terry Lennox

Author

Raymond Chandler

Source

The Long Goodbye

Medium

Novel

Genre

Detective fiction

Language

English

Time

1953 1950s 29th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Chandler, Raymond. The Long Goodbye. Hamish Hamilton/Houghton Mifflin, 1953, ch. 4.

To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

Yann Martel

Life of Pi (novel)

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Topic

Doubt and skepticism

Author

Yann Martel

Source

Life of Pi (novel)

Medium

Novel

Language

English

Time

2001 2000s 21st century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Martel, Yann. Life of Pi. Knopf Canada, 2001, ch. 7.

Hello babies. Welcome to earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies- "God damn it, you've got to be kind."

Kurt Vonnegut

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Topic

Kindness How to behave

Speaker

Eliot Rosewater

Author

Kurt Vonnegut

Source

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Medium

Novel

Statement Type

Advice

Language

English

Time

1965 1960s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965, ch. 7.

Longing on a large scale is what makes history.

Don DeLillo

More information about this quote

Topic

Forces of history Desire

Author

Don DeLillo

Source

Underworld

Medium

Novel

Language

English

Time

1997 1990s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

DeLillo, Don. Underworld. Scribner, 1997, prologue.

We have to live without sympathy, don't we? That's impossible of course. We act it to one another, this hardness; but we aren't like that really. I mean... One can't be out in the cold all the time; one has to come in from the cold... Do you see what I mean?

John le Carré

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

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Topic

Vulnerability

Speaker

Control

Author

John le Carré

Source

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Medium

Novel

Genre

Spy novel Spy

Language

English

Time

1963 1960s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Carré, John le. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Victor Gollancz & Pan, 1963, ch. 2.

The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty, unsexy ways, every day.

David Foster Wallace

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Topic

Caring for others

Speaker

David Foster Wallace

Source

2005 Kenyon College commencement address

Medium

Speech

Genre

Commencement address

Language

English

Time

2005 2000s 21st century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Wallace, David Foster. Commencement address at Kenyon College. Commencement. 21 May 2005, Kenyon College, Gambier, OH, USA.

Current Citation

Wallace, David Foster. This is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion about Living a Compassionate Life. Little, Brown and Company, 2009.

Sorrow comes in great waves—no one can know that better than you—but it rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us it leaves us on the spot, and we know that if it is strong we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain. It wears us, uses us, but we wear it and use it in return; and it is blind, whereas we after a manner see.

Henry James

More information about this quote

Topic

Learning from suffering Suffering

Author

Henry James

Source

Letters of Henry James

Medium

Letter

Statement Type

Metaphor, analogy and simile

Language

English

Time

1883 1880s 19th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

James, Henry. Letter to Grace Norton. 28 July 1883.

Current Citation

James, Henry. "July 28th [1883] To Grace Norton." The Complete Letters of Henry James, 1883-1884, edited by Michael Anesko and Greg W. Zacharias. Vol. 1, University of Nebraska Press, 2018.

I am a lover and have not found my thing to love.

Sherwood Anderson

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Topic

Looking for love

Speaker

Stranger

Author

Sherwood Anderson

Source

Tandy

Medium

Short story

Language

English

Time

1919 1910s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Anderson, Sherwood. "Tandy." Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small-Town Life. B. W. Huebsch, 1919.

Current Citation

Anderson, Sherwood. "Tandy." Winesburg, Ohio, edited by Marc K. Dudley. W. W. Norton & Company, 2023.

The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop.

John Updike

Couples

More information about this quote

Topic

Infidelity

Author

John Updike

Source

Couples

Medium

Novel

Language

English

Time

1968 1960s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Updike, John. Couples. Alfred A. Knopf, 1968, ch. 5.

It came to him that he had turned away from the buffalo not because of a womanish nausea at blood and stench and spilling gut; it came to him that he had sickened and turned away because of his shock at seeing the buffalo, a few moments before proud and noble and full of the dignity of life, now stark and helpless, a length of inert meat, divested of itself, or his notion of its self, swinging grotesquely, mockingly, before him. It was not itself; or it was not that self that he had imagined it to be. That self was murdered; and in that murder he had felt the destruction of something within him, and he had not been able to face it. So he had turned away.

John Williams (novelist)

Butcher's Crossing

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Topic

Animal cruelty Man and animals Interconnectedness of all things

Author

John Williams (novelist)

Source

Butcher's Crossing

Medium

Novel

Genre

Western fiction Western

Language

English

Time

1960 1960s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Williams, John. Butcher's Crossing. Macmillan, 1960, pt. 2, ch. 5.

Imagine that human existence is defined by an Ache: the Ache of our not being, each of us, the center of the universe; of our desires forever outnumbering our means of satisfying them.

Jonathan Franzen

Read this essay at harpers.org

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Topic

The human condition Desire

Author

Jonathan Franzen

Source

Harper's Magazine

Medium

Essay

Language

English

Time

1996 1990s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Franzen, Jonathan. "Perchance to Dream: In the Age of Images, a Reason to Write Novels." Harper's Magazine, Apr. 1996.

Current Citation

Franzen, Jonathan. "Why Bother?" How to Be Alone. Picador, 2002.

It is a funny thing about life, if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it: if you utterly decline to make do with what you can get, then somehow or other you are very likely to get what you want.

W. Somerset Maugham

More information about this quote

Topic

Getting what you want

Author

W. Somerset Maugham

Language

English

Time

1940 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Maugham, William Somerset. "The Treasure." The Mixture as Before. William Heinemann/Doubleday Doran, 1940.

There comes a time in a man's life when to get where he has to go-if there are no doors or windows-he walks through a wall.

Bernard Malamud

More information about this quote

Topic

Inflection points

Author

Bernard Malamud

Source

Man in the Drawer

Medium

Short story

Language

English

Time

1973 1970s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Malamud, Bernard. "Man in the Drawer." Rembrandt's Hat. Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1973.

Suicide... Is about life, being in fact the sincerest form of criticism life gets.

Wilfrid Sheed

More information about this quote

Topic

Suicide

Author

Wilfrid Sheed

Source

The Good Word & Other Words

Medium

Essay

Language

English

Time

1978 1970s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Sheed, Wilfrid. The Good Word & Other Words. E. P. Dutton, 1978, pt. 1, ch. 15.

Our noise for some seconds passed beyond excitement into a kind of immense open anguish, a wailing, a cry to be saved. But immortality is nontransferable. The papers said that the others players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he refused. Gods do not answer letters.

John Updike

Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu

More information about this quote

Topic

Athletes Heroes

Speaker

On Ted Williams's final game at Fenway Park.

Author

John Updike

Source

Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu The New Yorker

Medium

Magazine

Language

English

Time

1960 1960s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Updike, John. "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu." New Yorker, 22 Oct. 1960.

Current Citation

Updike, John. Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu. Library of America, 2010.

We have two lives...The life we learn with and the life we live with after that.

Bernard Malamud

The Natural

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Topic

Life lessons

Speaker

Iris Lemon

Author

Bernard Malamud

Source

The Natural

Medium

Novel

Language

English

Time

1952 1950s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Malamud, Bernard. The Natural. Harcourt Brace and Company, 1952.

You live all your life on lies, and then maybe when you're ready to die, it comes to you-that there's nothing, nothing but yourself and what you could have done.

John Williams (novelist)

Butcher's Crossing

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Topic

Living inauthentically Lying to oneself Regrets

Speaker

J.D. McDonald

Author

John Williams (novelist)

Source

Butcher's Crossing

Medium

Novel

Genre

Western fiction Western

Language

English

Time

1960 1960s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Williams, John. Butcher's Crossing. Macmillan, 1960, pt. 3, ch. 1.

To say that war is madness is like saying that sex is madness: true enough, from the standpoint of a stateless eunuch, but merely a provocative epigram for those who must make their arrangements in the world as given.

John Updike

Self-Consciousness

More information about this quote

Topic

War

Author

John Updike

Source

Self-Consciousness

Genre

Autobiography and memoir

Language

English

Time

1989 1980s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Updike, John. Self-Consciousness: Memoirs. Alfred A. Knopf, 1989, ch. 4.

When you love someone you leave every possibility open to them, and in spite of all the memories of the past you are ready to be surprised, again and again-surprised, at how different they are, how various, not a finished image.

Max Frisch

I'm Not Stiller

More information about this quote

Topic

Nature of love Love

Speaker

Julika Stiller-Tschudy

Author

Max Frisch

Source

I'm Not Stiller

Medium

Novel

Language

German

Time

1954 1950s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Frisch, Max. Stiller [I'm Not Stiller]. Suhrkamp, 1954, bk. 2.

Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father's heart? Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?

Thomas Wolfe

More information about this quote

Topic

Existential solitude

Author

Thomas Wolfe

Source

Look Homeward, Angel

Medium

Novel

Genre

Coming of age

Language

English

Time

1929 1920s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Wolfe, Thomas. Look Homeward, Angel: A Story of the Buried Life. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929, foreword.