c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
My mortgage isn’t getting any cheaper and I can’t run that Ferrari on faith alone," Reverend Jones said. "Don’t get me wrong, the Big Man upstairs does what he can but I’ve never once seen him filling up the tank of my car.
— Mark  Jackman, There's Something About Dying
As a child of privilege, no one is your friend. They will claim to be your friends, they will laugh at your jokes and invite you to their parties, but they do not like you. They like your power, they like what you will become someday.
— Orson Scott Card, Earth Unaware
Probably your biggest mistake was doing funk-dance to Unchained Melody,” the dog offered earnestly. “It’s a ballad, Alf, and to be honest, it’s one of the slowest songs I can think of. You’d have been better off doing a slow waltz to something with that tempo. The other factor may have been the large amount of beer you consumed beforehand.
— Mark  Jackman, There's Something About Dying
Remember Whose You Are.
— Kelly L. Ward, The Crimson Purpose: The Calling of Casey Evand
We want to believe that this life is longer than it is, but in the grand scheme of the universe our existence equals the amount of time it takes a warm breeze to blow through your hair on a spring day.
— Paul S.  Anderson, Take a Shot
Books are an extension of our imagination
— Danny Saunders
Wawashkeshthese apples arefor you,red on the whitesnow,their cider tangwill find youin the gray woods.There is a storyhow a snakeoffered an apple,so sweet, so cold,those bite wassorrow.--excerpt from Eric Gadzinski's poem "Wawashkeshgiwis" from The Way North
— Ron Riekki, The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works
In writing there is art - and in art there is craft ...
— Susi Moore
In writing, there is art. And in art, there is craft ...
— Susi Moore
King Yorandt to Kristina in book three of Fracture the Secret Enemy Saga~Secretsrelease date: Summer 2014 Even the master does not play perfectly. He can only hope to make fewer mistakes than his opponent, and that in the end, he is the victor. Sajah (chess) is a ruthless game where the pieces are all pawns and the Queen is the true killer. She spares no one to protect the king. The king however, is ruled by all of the pieces that lay before him, even his opponent. Every move is a decision that can change the whole board, and the endgame.
— Virginia McKevitt
My mortgage isn’t getting any cheaper and I can’t run that Ferrari on faith alone," Revernd Jones said. "Don’t get me wrong, the Big Man Upstairs does what he can but I’ve never once seen him filling up the tank of my car.
— Mark  Jackman, There's Something About Dying
How can she explain to him that every tear takes her further and further away from the box of razors that lies between them. How can she explain that she is terrified of such a thing happening. That although she thought she wanted freedom from her implements, she doesn't know if she can handle what she's experiencing now. That she wants to know that she is still in charge of her grief. That her blades have always done her bidding.
— Julia Hoban, Willow
And she knows then that she was right about her brother, that it takes an unbelievable strength to feel this kind of grief, and she doesn't know if she can handle it, because it really hurts, hurts her more than the razor ever could.
— Julia Hoban, Willow
Fictional people are people, too, otherwise why would we care what happens to them?
— Nora Roberts, The Collector
It was always this way: The more people talked, the more they obscured. You didn't need to argue for the truth. You could see it.
— Max Barry, Lexicon
It was as if - this something I thought of only later, of course - she was gently peeling back one layer after another that covered a person's heart, a very sensual feeling.
— Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun
And yet, as she sits there with him on the window seat, with his strong arms around her, she knows that if she can survive crying, then there are other things she can survive too. And that if some things are lost to her forever, there are others that she has not yet begun to experience. She knows too that what she wants is not because passion is the natural antidote to grief, but because it is the most natural, most perfect, most complete expression of what she feels for him.
— Julia Hoban, Willow
There are some things in this world that can be done over, and some that can't. And time passing is one thing that can't be redone. Come this tar, and you can't come back.
— Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun
There are some things in this world that can be done over, and some that can't. And time passing is one thing that can't be undone. Come this far, and you can't go back.
— Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun
In life, when you have a partner–someone you can rely on and trust with everything that you are–there isn’t anything you can’t accomplish. I will always be there for you, if you let me.
— Christina L. Barr, Sunrise Sunset
Perhaps our suffering is part of our humanity.
— Christina L. Barr, Sunrise Sunset
Lo! A call for a bloody trial-Retribution should it hail!Whose? you ask,For he that deems it a worthy task!
— Carol Robi, Dawn of War
All it takes, is one leap of faith.
— E.K. Dobbins
I believe every story that is made in the mind of an author
—  has a trace in real world.A historical fiction completely or partly has happened in the past and a fiction will happen in the future. We are seeing many devices which Jules Verne predicted in his novels!One day you will hear about an invisible fellow. This thought causes motivation and gaiety for me when writing a story.
Conventional wisdom may not be wise.Good fortune and bad luck do not exist.Freedom of choice is predetermined.Don’t believe anything you read!
— L.  Anthony, The South Hills Conspiracy
It was as if-this is something I thought of only later, of course-she was gently peeling bcd one layer after another hat covered a person's heart, a very sensual feeling.
— Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun
She suddenly felt herself gasping for air, as if she’d momentarily forgotten how to breathe. She rocked back in her chair and nearly fell over, then slumped against the green-covered table. The bowl fell from her fingers, shattering at her feet, broken glass scattering everywhere.
— Joe DeRouen, Threads
Pain is an inevitable part when you truly love.
— Vinsfortin, The Promise
It was as if - this something I thought of only later, of course - she were gently peeling back one layer after another that covered a person's heart, a very sensual feeling.
— Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun
How is it possible you have caught me off guard, he seemed to ask. Exactly where have I miscalculated the velocities, how have I misjudged the vectors?
— Stephanie Vaughn, Sweet Talk
... instead of spelling stories you spread silence, which was outside the alphabet.
— Lauren Slater, The $60,000 Dog: My Life with Animals
I didn't know then that the mind, like the earth, has several layers: a crust, a mantle, a boiling core.
— Lauren Slater, The $60,000 Dog: My Life with Animals
We awoke to a fabulation of ice, the sun shining like a weapon, light rocketing off every surface except the surfaces of the Army's clean streets and walks.
— Stephanie Vaughn, Sweet Talk
Hate was the blazing beauty that consumed the world in its flames. Love could never consume anything but the heart of a fool.
— Christina L. Barr, Sunrise Sunset
Every minute I decide not to kill you is a minute your life is saved. You owe me everything.
— Christina L. Barr, Sunrise Sunset
Poetry is a tool for writers to create literature in different forms of expression and messages. 
— Vanessa M. Chattman, Castle Stories
Life is the courier of the universal brilliance." Elysse
— Elysse Poetis, The Mind of a Poetess
C, it was like my breath was stolen. My heart seemed to merge with yours. When you came into my life, all I wanted was you. All I thought about was you. Your smile, your laugh, your lips, and your eyes seemed to hold me captive.” ~Tru~
— J.L. Clayton, A Spark of Magic
Jace’s husky voice almost came out in a purr. He said, “You want to make a bet on that, Charlie.” Oh yeah, he can sell that stuff alright. “No worries,” Jace was saying. “I only have eyes for you.” He touched the tip of my nose with his finger. I swatted him away. Jace laughed. ~Jace~
— J.L. Clayton, A Spark of Magic
Fiction challenges us and works its miracles by placing us in the skin of another human being and teaching us empathy.
— Hugh Howey
I'd always had a guilty preference for fiction. Since I seemed now to be living fiction, this proved to have been an entirely reasonable choice.
— Robin McKinley, Sunshine
Scripture trains us to listen to and learn from stories of all kinds, inside the sacred text and outside, and to discern patterns and meanings within them. Stories of all sorts form and shape the character of those who read them. We live within the narrative as creatures in search of an ending, in search of happiness.
— N.T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters
...to use the little kick of energy which opposition supplies to be more vigorously oneself.
— Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary
Her scream of utter horror and fright was a sound that no one in the chamber would ever forget.~Crispin.~
— J.L. Clayton, A Spark of Magic
To me, the best, if not the only function of imaginative writing, is to lead the human imagination outward, to take it into the vast external cosmos, and away from all that introversion and introspection, that morbidly exaggerated prying into one's own vitals—and the vitals of others—which Robinson Jeffers has so aptly symbolized as "incest." What we need is less "human interest," in the narrow sense of the term—not more. Physiological—and even psychological analysis—can be largely left to the writers of scientific monographs on such themes. Fiction, as I see it, is not the place for that sort of grubbing.
— Clark Ashton Smith
Almost all heroism is designed to make you inert by placing it in a context that you can't possibly act on.
— Stefan Molyneux
How scary and sudden the shift from Living to Dead.
— Marisha Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Oh. C’mon, pretty girl. I like it when ya scream.” The leader breathed into my ear. I spat as good as I could on his hand. He jumped back glaring. I said, “Funny. You like it when I scream? Yet you cover my mouth!” I laughed then winced.
— J.L. Clayton, A Spark of Magic
Why can’t I take you? Why is it so hard? You have the other half of my soul; with you I will be complete! So. Then. Why?” Crispin murmured clenching his fists.  Oh, he pitied the fool who would be in his way once he returned to his domain. “Oh, what suffering will befall them in her place,” he smiled wickedly. ~Crispin~
— J.L. Clayton, A Spark of Magic
Can the child who is Dell; be the outer emoodiment of man's quest to save himself? To cure himself?...Or, to "be" himself?
— Milkweed L. Augustine
To write you dreams of fantasy, is to create fantasy in another's dreams.
— Rob Shepherd
To write your dreams of fantasy, is to create fantasy in another's dreams
— Rob Shepherd, Life with Boris Karloff!
It never occurs to one to think whether she is pretty or ugly. One just surrenders to her charm.
— François Mauriac, Thérèse Desqueyroux
A fiction writer is nothing more than the ambassador of an alternative world of their own design. Their success dwells in how many people their work entices to relocate
— Carl Henegan, Darkness Left Undone
It was the love which the hunter has for living things, and which he can only express by aiming his gun at them ...
— Italo Calvino
I am not as valuable as the books, I AM the books! They are a part of me I cannot delete or cut off or ignore! I AM CURRENCY! - Nevel Walker
— Whitney L. Grady, I Am Currency
Grover spit expertly between his teeth. "You know, Nerburn," he said, "you're like those treaty negotiators we used to have to deal with. Always in a hurry. Sometimes there are preliminaries." "There are preliminaries and there are evasions," I said. "Look out there." I swept my hand across the blazing, parched horizon. "We've got to get moving if we want to get up there before it's a hundred and ten degrees." "Just relax. He's just doing it the Lakota way, by laying out the history. That's how we remember our history, by telling our story," "But does every story have to start with Columbus?" "Everything starts with Columbus. At least everything to do with white people." "But what's with the French fries?" "He likes to get rid of the salt." "No, the piles. First he insists on getting exactly twenty-eight, then he divides them into piles. It doesn't make any sense." A small smile crept across Grover's face. "How many piles?" he asked. "Four." He spit one more time onto the ground. It made a small puff of explosion in the dust. "Mmm. Twenty-eight French fries. Four piles of seven." He made a great charade of counting on his fingers. "Let's see. Four seasons. Four directions. Four stages of life. "Seven council fires. Seven sacred rituals. The moon lives for twenty-eight days. Yeah, I guess that doesn't make any sense." "That's crazy," I said. "What is it? Some kind of Lakota French fry rosary?
— Kent Nerburn, The Wolf at Twilight: An Indian Elder's Journey through a Land of Ghosts and Shadows
Outside of the usual bar or nightclub, it's not every day that I get a drink bought for me-at least not by strangers and certainly not on a workday. On that Saturday, in September 2010, it was from three separate individuals.
— Jason Leclerc, Momentitiousness
I have been incapable of moving, even a finger or an eye, for at least a year now. I feel relatively certain about this timeframe because I have been watching the crepe myrtle outside the window of the room I am in...
— Jason Leclerc, Momentitiousness
Everyone asks me how I got started into writing. I wish I had some cool story to tell, but the truth is pretty lame. My wife and I were having a drink on our back porch and I mentioned a concept I'd been mulling over. She suggested that I write it down, and so I figured I'd make a few notes and get it out of my system. No matter how I tried though, it just wouldn't let me write it in any other way than a story. Believe me when I say I tried, but 63,000 words later I realized that I needed a chart to track the plot and personas to maintain character consistency. So I just gave up and let it write itself from that point on. As far as I'm concerned at this point, I'm just hanging on and trying to keep up.
— Jason Faris, De-published - now part of "For Every Action"
NOTHING IS GREATER THAN ITS SOURCE
— Chukwuso Stephen Akachukwu, The Acts of the Slave-Traders: The Acts of the Slave-Traders
She began sobbing again. “I’m not ready to die.
— T.C. Avey
I tried to hate you, to forgive you, all just to forget you, but I'm only capable of loving you. You're tattooed onto my skin, and the more I try to erase you, the deeper you sink in.
— Mirella Muffarotto, Soccer Sweetheart
My whore of a brother has done it again." "Then, as always, orders me to clean up the mess." "I think I hate him." Poseidon to his brother, Zeus.
— Yelle Hughes
It was dark, so I couldn't make out much of her face, but she had brilliant red hair, like honey and roses and the sun altogether.
— Kiera Cass, The Selection Stories: The Prince & The Guard
People say it's not what happens in your life that matters, it's what you think happened. But this qualification, obviously, did not go far enough. It was quite possible that the central event of your life could be something that didn't happen, or something you thought didn't happen. Otherwise there'd be no need for fiction, there'd only be memoirs and histories...
— Geoff Dyer, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi
As every reader knows in his or her heart, there is much more to truth than mere fact.
— Alison Croggon
My most educated analysis, with all means of science and technology in mind, is that it’s magic,” Alex said. “There’s no other possible explanation!” -Alex Bailey, The Land of Stories; The Wishing Spell
— Chris Colfer The Land of Stories
I want art that makes the world seem more unreal. I want fiction that can crumble the world and build it back into something new.
— Lincoln Michel
We invent fictions in order to live somehow the many lives we would like to lead when we barely have one at our disposal.
— Mario Vargas Llosa, In Praise of Reading and Fiction: The Nobel Lecture
There's no such thing as fiction", Annie told him once. "If you can imagine something, then it's happened.
— Charles de Lint, Someplace to Be Flying
My life is in these books, he wants to tell her. Read these and know my heart.
— Gabrielle Zevin, All These Things I've Done
I have always been fascinated by the ocean, to dip a limb beneath its surface and know that I'm touching eternity, that it goes on forever until it begins here again.
— Lauren DeStefano, Wither
Living is worth the effort if only because without life we could not read or imagine stories.
— Mario Vargas Llosa, In Praise of Reading and Fiction: The Nobel Lecture
Grandpa Sereno: "There is nothing as dangerous as fear, fear of people who are different than you. Fear is the REAL danger and we must start to put all our efforts into fighting THAT instead of each other. Fight fear not people!!!		Let there be light!
— Sipporah Joseph, Spirit Tale Three: Teacher of Counsel
I mutter and mutter and no one to listen. I speak my words in Japanese and my daughter will not hear them. The words that come from our ears, our mouths, they collide in the space between us."Obachan, please! I wish you would stop that. Is it too much to ask for some peace and quiet? You do this on purpose, don’t you? Don’t you! I just want some peace. Just stop! Please, just stop.""Gomennasai. Waruine, Obachan wa. Solly. Solly."Ha! Keiko, there is method in my madness. I could stand on my head and quote Shakespeare until I had a nosebleed, but to no avail, no one hears my language. So I sit and say the words and will, until the wind or I shall die. Someone, something must stand against this wind and I will. I am.
— Hiromi Goto, Chorus Of Mushrooms
Because of literature we can decipher, at least partially, the hieroglyphic that existence tends to be for the great majority of human beings.
— Mario Vargas Llosa, In Praise of Reading and Fiction: The Nobel Lecture
She actually isn't so bad, now that I'm getting to know her. She's just a little messy on the outside. But aren't we all?
— S. Elle Cameron, A Tragic Heart
Shimmel: “NEVER TRUST THE GOYIM. They are just like these other weird dangerous people, Messianic Jews! How dare Jews become “Christian-like”, Messianic? We should cherem (ban) them from every aspect of Jewish life. And we must strip them of every Jewish privilege!
— Sipporah Joseph, Spirit Tale Three: Teacher of Counsel
The Adventure called and I followed with my thumb like a character being written by an intractable author. Which, of course, I was.
— Sol Luckman, Beginner's Luke
Before the next minute had passed, they had all fallen to the ground. Just like that. As though someone had reached inside and turned off a switch."What happened?" Matt asked, gasping.I went from one person to the next, trying to wake them up, but they were all dead, wrote Daft Donald.
— Nancy Farmer, The House of the Scorpion
Sarucha (age 8): "Look, down there, I recognize it, ciudad de Jerusalén (the city of Jerusalem)! Jerusalén!, Jerusalén!" she exclaimed.
— Sipporah Joseph, Spirit Tale Five: Teacher of Knowledge
Light has a voice?” Sarucha inquired, amazed.
— Sipporah Joseph, Spirit Tale Five: Teacher of Knowledge
Although the villagers rose with the sun to work the fields, attend to the animals, bake their bread, and begin their long list of chores, for me, Leya Truelong, this was a day like no other. Today, Wren River was touched by the fantastic. Desiccate by Bonnie Ferrante
— Bonnie Ferrante, Desiccate
Philippe to his mother "do stop chasing after a carriage that has a runaway mare.
— E.L.R. Jones formerly, now Ellie Keys, Forbidden: A Prince's Most Coveted Possession
The times have changed and now the story is old, but yet it all remains the same, a victim in the cold.
— Stephen  Harker, Tales By Candlelight: Stories of Terror, Horror & Woe
life is not about being fearless its about controlling your fears
— veronice roth
Fiction inhabits the zone between the real and the impossible. The tug of those two poles is what gives it motion, vitality. Tethering fiction too tightly to the real produces plodding, lifeless stories. Letting it float too far from that anchor produces stories that are arbitrary and unpersuasive.
— Vinnie Tesla
It hurts,” Summer cries, head shaking back and forth. “Please, make it stop.” Sweat beads on her forehead.“What hurts?” Cameron asks.“My eyes.”Summer’s eyes open. Everyone gasps. They’re no longer blue; they appear bionic, like a circuit board’s inside her eyes. Panicked now, Summer reaches for her face. “What is it? What’s wrong?
— Laura Kreitzer, Burning Falls
Beneath Albright’s office, the colliery sprawled across the hillside, red brick buildings scattered as though hurled from a great height, a hotchpotch of mismatched structures spattered on the valley floor. At the bottom stood the winding house, wheels motionless, above it, the engineering sheds and workshops, canteen and bath house. All lay empty. No buzz and hum of machinery. No voices raised in laughter or dispute. Gwyn found it unsettling: his lads had been out a month and a half and already the power had drained from the place. In the stillness, he caught the echo of footsteps. The crunch of boots on gravel. Generations of long-gone Pritchards clocking in and out. He was bound to Blackthorn by the coal that clogged his veins and by a bond of duty. The strike left him as diminished as his pit, day dragging after idle day.
— Kit Habianic, Until Our Blood is Dry
You two are bound to one another. You always have been … and you can't run away from what you are. No matter where you go, your feelings for her are going to follow you.
— Mirella Muffarotto, Soccer Sweetheart
Laughter comes from living." I shrug, try to sound indifferent. "I've never really been alive before.
— Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me
On the misty window of her room, she let her finger trace a broken line. She was that line.
— Azin Sametipour, Tehran Moonlight
but in Utopia, where every man has a right to everything, they all know that if care is taken to keep the public stores full no private man can want anything; for among them there is no unequal distribution, so that no man is poor, none in necessity, and though no man has anything, yet they are all rich; for what can make a man so rich as to lead a serene and cheerful life, free from anxieties; neither apprehending want himself, nor vexed with the endless complaints of his wife?
— Thomas More, Utopia
His smile is beautiful. It's the kind of smile that can take away all nervousness and tension in a room, no matter how big. I have no choice but to smile back.
— S. Elle Cameron, A Tragic Heart
Truth in her dress finds facts too tight. In fiction she moves with ease.
— Rabindranath Tagore
Every healthy person at some period must feed on fiction as well as fact; because fact is a thing which the world gives to him, whereas fiction is a thing which he gives to the world.
— G.K. Chesterton, The Spice of Life
The education of youth belongs to the priests, yet they do not take so much care of instructing them in letters, as in forming their minds and manners aright; they use all possible methods to infuse, very early, into the tender and flexible minds of children, such opinions as are both good in themselves and will be useful to their country, for when deep impressions of these things are made at that age, they follow men through the whole course of their lives, and conduce much to preserve the peace of the government, which suffers by nothing more than by vices that rise out of ill opinions.
— Thomas More, Utopia
For me, stories are like WD-40 for the brain: they keep all the wheels and gears and clicky-things running smoothly. Without them, cognitive function becomes a bore.
— The Inkslinger
To believers, the bible is a holy book, to unbelievers, it is a story book.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
...Life had handed me a different set of cards and I was going to have to play my hand either way.
— Brittany Hawes, Twisted
I knew that feeling, the sense of panic that stretched time, turning seconds into years, and the deep pain that came from being hurt by not one person but many, a gang of bullies that expanded into a neighborhood and then into a community, until you questioned the whole world. And your last thought, as you stretch your arm until your fingers are inches from that lifeline, is how if you survive, you'll find a way to help fix what was broken, so you can say that yes, you want to be part of the world again.
— Lissa Price, Starters
The fictitious kleptomaniac's only crime was stealing imaginations
— Dean Cavanagh
…progress isn't necessarily about change but about things turning out as we want them to
— Phil Hogan, A Pleasure and a Calling
When you least expect it, you run in to an old friend from school, or the neighbour’s cat, not Mary the Virgin Mother of God.
— Margot McCuaig, The Birds That Never Flew
It should be said that my parents had married for love. The affection and devotion they had shared was the rarest of indulgences, perhaps especially in those days. For them, it had been love at first sight, and so my mother's death shattered my father. That it only dimmed his light rather than snuffed it out altogether was a miracle in and of itself. ~The Peacemakers ~(The Nemesis Engines)
— Olivier A. Blanchard
but in Utopia, where every man has a right to everything, they all know that if care is taken to keep the public stores full no private man can want anything; for among them there is no unequal distribution, so that no man is poor, none in necessity, and though no man has anything, yet they are all rich; for what can make a man so rich as to lead a serene and chreerful life, free from anxieties; neither apprehending want himself, nor vexed with the endless complaints of his wife?
— Thomas More, Utopia
Why did you leave? Am I not good enough? Where did you go? When did it happen? ..Who are you?
— Ade Santi
Lucy: I don't feel like talking about college. It increases my stress level.James: And increased stress levels lead to hair loss.Lucy: My head-hair volume is fine.James: You say that like I should be concerned about leg-hair volume.
— Kristen Tracy, Hung Up
Anyone who met him today would say, *Soldier. Fighter.* They would want him on their team. As a mother she was willing to engage in pride over fear and to admit the possibility that his sacriﬁce was hers, too. His sacriﬁce was something she had been able to give her country.
— Lea Carpenter, Eleven Days
I wasn't writing home. I wasn't writing a death letter, either. I was writing a death journal, a piece of fiction meant for my family and my fiancee, Sara.
— Clint Van Winkle, Soft Spots: A Marine's Memoir of Combat and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
It's just like an alcoholic to think he's doing the Zombie Apocalypse wrong.
— Michele W. Miller, The Thirteenth Step: Zombie Recovery
Creativity is a commodity and derives its value only in how energy is spent.
— Mary Deal, River Bones: A Mystery Novel
It must have really not liked me, but I can't imagine why, don't say anything Amelia."Amelia shrugged her shoulders, "It liked me the first time."Otto smirked, "Well I have no idea why.
— Otto Ray and Amelia Raht
Amelia nodded her head, "That makes perfect sense.""No is doesn't," jeered Otto."Yes, it does,” sighed Amelia. "Don't you ever remember anything important?""Of course, I remember how many Star Trek seasons there were and when the Three Stooges were born!
— Monet Polny, The Lincoln Spy
Fix me," I commanded him. "This thing, what I've done- there's something wrong with me, Noah. Fix it."Noah's expression broke my heart as he brushed my hair from my face and skimmed the line of my neck. "I can't.""Why not?" I asked, my voice threatening to crack.Noah lifted both his hands to my face, and held it. "Because," he said, "you aren't broken.
For now the world keeps turning and I keep breathing, in and out, in and out. I breathe in the life that is all around me, in this garden, in this city, in the fields beyond it, in the seas beyond them and the shores on the other side; life that reaches out towards the unreachable, unknowable space that is beyond all of us and the stars that burn there.
— Clare Furniss, The Year of the Rat
It's better to lose some of battles in the struggle for your dreams than to be defeated without ever even knowing what you're fighting for.
— Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
It's only artists who know how to use their eyes
— Grant Albert Camus
Under fun’s new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don’t want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff all writers and readers share and respond to, feel. Fiction becomes a weird way to countenance yourself and to tell the truth instead of being a way to escape yourself or to present yourself in a way you figure you will be maximally likable. This process is complicated and confusing and scary, and also hard work, but it turns out to be the best fun there is.The fact that you can now sustain the fun of writing only by confronting the very same unfun parts of yourself you’d first used writing to avoid or disguise is another paradox, but this one isn’t any kind of bind at all. What it is is a gift, a kind of miracle, and compared to it the reward of strangers’ affection is as dust, lint.
— David Foster Wallace, Both Flesh and Not: Essays
I can be a woman on a mission. But I'll choose what mission that is. And that my friend is where youll see the results.
— Kia Carrington-Russell
As I pen these words to leave a lasting record, I wonder myself where it all began.
— Richard Peck, Ghosts I Have Been
Everyday, God gives us the sun- and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy. Everyday, we try to pretend that we haven't perceived that moment, that it doesn't exist - that today is the sames as tomorrow. But if people really pay attention to their everyday lives, they will discover that magic moment.
— Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold.
— George Orwell, 1984
All the clues are there in front of us,hidden under a veil,we cannot get the clue by searching for,we have to search for the veil instead.
— Arkopaul Das, THE DEAD VETERAN
Remember that human wisdom is madness in the eyes of God. But if we listen to the child who lives in our soul, our eyes will grow bright.
— Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
Unintended jealousy is merciless.
— Doctor Kesi, Rage In The Jungle, Raj On The Street
In the Ottoman times, there were itinerant storytellers called "meddah. " They would go to coffee houses, where they would tell a story in front of an audience, often improvising. With each new person in the story, the meddah would change his voice, impersonating that character. Everybody could go and listen, you know ordinary people, even the sultan, Muslims and non-Muslims. Stories cut across all boundaries. Like "The Tales of Nasreddin Hodja," which were very popular throughout the Middle East, North Africa, the Balkans and Asia. Today, stories continue to transcend borders
— Elif Shafak
To give herself a measure of credible autonomy, she had decided to invent a husband. Then, in a subsequent flash of inspiration, she had just as quickly killed him off.
— Tracy Anne Warren, The Accidental Mistress
Historical fiction of course is particularly research-heavy. The details of everyday life are there to trip you up. Things that we take for granted, indeed, hardly think about, can lead to tremendous mistakes.
— Sara Sheridan
C.J. had once believed that he understood who he was, what he was about, what he was capable of. But when the moment came to act upon these convictions, he discovered that his knowledge of self was faulty. Had his lack of killer instinct been a momentary lapse, first time jitters? Or was there more to it than that? If not the fearless, remorseless man he supposed himself to be, then just who was he?
— Roy L. Pickering Jr., Patches Of Grey
Joy is sometimes a blessing, but it is often a conquest. our magic moment help us to change and sends us off in search of our dreams. Yes, we are going to suffer, we will experience many disappointment- but all of this is transitory,; it leaves no permanent mark.
— Paulo Coelho
Writing historical fiction has many common traits with writing sci-fi or fantasy books. The past is another country - a very different world - and historical readers want to see, smell and touch what it was like living there.
— Sara Sheridan
She stared at the faded tile floor before her feet, but knew his every step around her small kitchen. When Martin touched the coffee cup patterned curtains he must assume she’d made, her fingers throbbed. When his eyes slid across the flowery aluminum water bottle at the table, her throat cracked with thirst.The radio clicked off.The silence of the room soaked up her raspy breaths, her pounding heart, her ache, and stirred them around the one man she ever longed for in a way that changes how you taste the world.Her desire swirled in a pulsing, betraying, blurry hook, and encouraged him to move closer.Martin obeyed.
— Kim Bongiorno, Part of My World: Short Stories
If everything comes in your way just the way you wanted them to ,then you're probably in the wrong lane.
— ARKOPAUL
I am taken to the police station and they place me in an interrogation room. I am there for about thirty minutes before someone walks in.
— Jorge   Ortiz, The Take Down
I've always felt that good writing does not have to be literary.
— Sara Sheridan
I know a lot of writers, and everyone works differently, but this is something that we truly have in common across all genres - the fiction has to be real inside your head.
— Sara Sheridan
Ironically, [living in] communities of the like - minded is one of the greatest dangers of today ́s globalized world. And it ́s happening everywhere, among liberals and conservatives, agnostics and believers, the rich and the poor, East and West alike. We tend to form clusters based on similarity, and then we produce stereotypes about other clusters of people. In my opinion, one way of transcending these cultural ghettos is through the art of storytelling
— Elif Shafak
I have no problem in moving a date one way or another or coming up with a subplot that gets my characters in (or out) of a fix more rambunctiously than the extant records show.
— Sara Sheridan
Then, the door opens and there he is; silhouetted in the hall light. Long hair, long legs, and a heartbeat in tune with my own.
— Hunter S. Jones, September Ends
With one perfect kiss on one perfect English summer afternoon, we understand the meaning of all the colors of every rainbow, forevermore.
— Hunter S. Jones, September Ends
Nashville has always been competitive. My granddaddy called it the Hillbilly Babylon.
— Hunter S. Jones, Fortune Calling
There is only one kind of immorality in fiction, and that is when you write badly.
— Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers
When writing fiction, you learn to only put things and characters in, that are going to progress your story. There is something to be learned about that approach in real life
— Carl Henegan, Darkness Left Undone
It’s a very private moment when your heart breaks. I was thankful we were alone. I knew I couldn’t keep her, but I would always do anything to protect her.
— S.G. Holster, Heartlines
If I kiss you now, I won't be able to stop.
— Katlyn Charlesworth, The Tomorrows
My mother picked me up in her arms, touching my checks comforting my distress. I stared into her eyes and held her hair in my small hands, for the first time realizing what a moment in time meant. I touched her cheek and then looked away, knowing this was the truth to life, and there was nothing I could do about it. The truth that her death would one day occur made me realize that I never wanted her to leave my side. It was something I could not control, something no one could ever stop no matter how strong they were.
— Joseph McGinnis, This Shadow Follows Me
My new story collection won’t please everyone, nor was it meant to. Then again, not everybody lives in my world. If they did, I’d have to move out and find another world to write about.
— Ted Gargiulo, The Man Who Invented New Jersey: Collected Stories
People make interesting assumptions about the profession. The writer is a mysterious figure, wandering lonely as a cloud, fired by inspiration, or perhaps a cocktail or two.
— Sara Sheridan
Just then a familiar voiced spoke right in to Stephens’s ear which startled him as his eyes once again began slowly opening. “Don’t try to move or talk you two, not that you could if you wanted to anyway.” It was Bob inches away from his face and he sounded very different now, his voice was low and threatening and his eyes were unsmiling and cold. “Very soon you will be gone and there will be no trace of any of you here, or us for that matter.” He felt Bob go through his pockets until eventually he saw that he had pulled his van keys out of his pocket. Stephen looked around for his baby and he could see the others passing a sleeping Rosie clutching Roo and her dummy to the goblin like creatures. They grabbed her with their long thin hands with talon like fingers and then began sniffing her like animals that smelt out the prey. Bob saw him looking at them walking off with Rosie. “Don’t worry Stephen. The sproggers will care for her” Bob told him before letting out a spine shivering sinister laugh.
— Gary Peeling
Ah, dear Reader, is there a married man living who hasn’t purged his drawers and closets of premarital memorabilia, only to have one more incriminating relic from yester-life rear its lovely head? Kristy contends that old flames never die, not completely. They smolder for years in hidden places. They flare up again just when you think you’re over them. They can burn you if you don’t deal with them. Such is the price I’ve had to pay for not rooting out the evidence of my life B.C. (Before Contentment). Or, perhaps, for having planted it too well. But that, you see, is no longer an issue. Shall I tell you the crux of this argument? A man with a past can be forgiven. A man without one cannot be trusted. If there were no pictures in my drawer for Kirsty to uncover, I would have had to produce some.
— Ted Gargiulo, The Man Who Invented New Jersey: Collected Stories
Make sure he's worth it. She had thought it so many times it had become a part of her. Like her tongue filling her mouth, so this tenet filled her being.
— Colleen McCarty, Mounting the Whale
Procuring the house in Ballister was a desperate bid for respect, for recognition, the ultimate gesture (or sacrifice, as it turned out) that would prove him a worthy successor to the Flo and Walter Prices of the world. To my mind, the Culver was Norm’s way home, the only way he knew. It was an ever-evolving means to an ever-evolving end that eventually ended him. Who or what led Norm down that thorny path—devotion, economic pressures, family cynicism, Beth’s insatiable appetite—has been a topic of endless debate. You can believe what you want to believe. Personally, I don’t think any rational argument under the sun would have deterred Beth’s “messiah” from his mission. If the Ballister acquisition was Norm’s cross, as everyone seems to think it was, then it was Norm who chose to bear that cross. And pride that nailed him to it.
— Ted Gargiulo, The Man Who Invented New Jersey: Collected Stories
Picture this broad: 22 going on 18. Half the guys in my class would have given their left testicle to date her. This cupcake is the guidance counselor the principal has assigned me. Miss Boyle is her name. We all call her “Miss Bubbly Water.” Imagine the teasing I have to endure from my friends. Not to mention what it’s like, sitting across from this Barbie Doll every Thursday afternoon, watching her cross and uncross her legs, while she’s lecturing me about—get this: “staying focused.” Right! My pants are on fire, and she’s handing me a crash course in Psych 101!
— Ted Gargiulo, The Man Who Invented New Jersey: Collected Stories
That’s what fiction is for. It’s for getting at the truth when the truth isn’t sufficient for the truth.
— Tim O’Brien
Love, is an unknown passion, for an unknown person, for an unknown reason.
— Hamza Hassan Sheikh
...but the air's flat and stale and the people half-hearted. There's nothing to do there. You can make love without trouble or meaning, or get mildly drunk, or extract second-hand emotions from the cinema, or put your mind to sleep on a dance-floor, or play bridge, or throw yourself in front of a train on the Underground. There are forty ways of escaping from consciousness. But I want something more exciting than that.
— Eric Linklater, Magnus Merriman
My breath is halted, like grasping for air after crying far too long and hard. It is like a hiccup, with a shivering sharpness of nerves. It is like icicles running down your spine or aluminum in your mouth, an eerie amount of emotions that cannot compare to the actual feelings you’ve managed to live through. I just watched you die, I say to myself silently.
— Joseph McGinnis, This Shadow Follows Me
Books have a vital place in our culture. They are the source of ideas, of stories that engage and stretch the imagination and most importantly, inspire.
— Sara Sheridan
When you think about the period in which Agatha Christie's crime novels were written, they are actually quite edgy for the time.
— Sara Sheridan
I decided to coin the term 'cosy crime noir' for Brighton Belle. That is 'cosy crime' for today's sensibilities because there is that slightly edgy element to it.
— Sara Sheridan
I have a really vivid imagination and I find it difficult to read scenes of complete graphic violence. That's not to say that graphic violence does not exist. It's just that I find it quite harrowing and I much prefer if it isn't completely outlined for me because my imagination can do that.
— Sara Sheridan
You spill a lot of beans in historical fiction. Crime fiction is about spilling no beans at all. You spill the least beans you possibly can. So because I had already written historical fiction before I was really good at the spilling beans section, but the new skill I had to learn when I was writing Brighton Belle was difficult. I had to avoid the equivalent of shouting, "this character's a murderer! Look who did it!.
— Sara Sheridan
Archive material is vital to the writer of historical fiction.
— Sara Sheridan
The best historical stories capture the modern imagination because they are, in many senses, still current - part of a continuum.
— Sara Sheridan
Nanny Ogg was an attractive lady, which is not the same as being beautiful. She fascinated Casanunda. She was an incredibly comfortable person to be around, partly because she had a mind so broad it could accommodate three football fields and a bowling alley.
— Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies
[Referring to passage by Alice Munro] Finally, the passage contradicts a form of bad advice often given young writers -- namely, that the job of the author is to show, not tell. Needless to say, many great novelists combine "dramatic" showing with long sections of the flat-out authorial narration that is, I guess, what is meant by telling. And the warning against telling leads to a confusion that causes novice writers to think that everything should be acted out -- don't tell us a character is happy, show us how she screams "yay" and jumps up and down for joy -- when in fact the responsibility of showing should be assumed by the energetic and specific use of language.
— Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
I do love you. I love you enough to accept who you are. Why can’t I received the same feeling in return?”-Ariel
— Khalia Hades, Ariel's Demise
I had forgotten what fiction was to me as a boy, forgotten what it was like in the library: fiction was an escape from the intolerable, a doorway into impossibly hospitable worlds where things had rules and could be understood; stories had been a way of learning about life without experiencing it, or perhaps of experiencing it as an eighteenth-century poisoner dealt with poisons, taking them in tiny doses, such that the poisoner could cope with ingesting things that would kill someone who was not inured to them. Sometimes fiction is a way of coping with the poison of the world in a way that lets us survive it.
— Neil Gaiman
Fiction can do more than entertain you
—  it can change you
I have found that in fiction one is freer to speak the truth, if only because in fiction the truth is not expected or required. You may easily disguise it, so that it is only recognized much later, when the story and the characters have faded into darkness.
— Philip Sington
… it would even be inexact to say that I thought of those who read it as readers of my book. Because they were not, as I saw it, my readers. More exactly they were readers of themselves, my book being a sort of magnifying glass … by which I could give them the means to read within themselves.
— Marcel Proust, Time Regained
That was the September I cut school six times in my first two weeks. I just couldn't do school anymore. Something inside wouldn't let me.
— Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Aging and the prospect of dying by no means enhance the attractiveness of fictitious comforts to come in paradise, or the veracity of malicious myths about hellfire and damnation. Fear and feeblemindedness cannot be credibly pressed into service to support fantastic claims about the cosmos and our ultimate destiny.Whether one would even consider turning to religion in advanced years has much to do with upbringing, which makes all the more important standing up to the presumptions of the religious in front of children. One would regard the Biblical events – a spontaneously igniting bush, a sea’s parting, human parthenogenesis, a resurrected prophet and so on – that supposedly heralded God’s intervention in our affairs as the stuff of fairy tales were it not for the credibility we unwittingly lend them by keeping quiet out of mistaken notions of propriety.
— Jeffrey Tayler
Outside the Bar Del Prado, night was coming on like a hopeless, drunken come-on, tequila on its breath, red neon signs and, outside the shops, strings of colored Christmas lights hung from the eaves like the sad, close-lipped smiles of boys who would lure you in with their loneliness, that melancholia you'd try and try to fix.
— Michaela Carter, Further Out Than You Thought: A Novel
Stories serve multiple purposes. At a basic level they are great entertainment, which is essential for living a happy and healthy life, but on a deeper level stories help us explore issues that are otherwise difficult to address. On one hand a good book helps us escape our troubles, and on the other hand it can help us face up to those troubles by bringing real issues to the fore, often in a more manageable way, since the problems are experienced vicariously through the eyes of another.
— Dean F. Wilson
Writing is a solitary business. It’s just you and your characters and a blank page you need to fill.
— Shannon Celebi
It's from the newspapers that people I know - relatives and co-workers - have got the idea that crosswords are a prophylactic against Alzheimer's. Newspapers are of course also the place where crosswords (and now sudokus) are most readily available, so the association is presumably good for circulation.
— Alan Connor, Two Girls, One on Each Knee (7): The Puzzling, Playful World of the Crossword
Running her fingers on the scales, she sighs. “I wonder what its like to be a human?”“Why won’t you just go and find out?” the question startled her. She whirled around to come face to face with her evil aunt; Ursula.
— Khalia Hades, Ariel's Demise
One is almost tempted to say... at last I can almost see a bond. But that will never be, for a bond does not really exist at all: it is a most convenient fiction which, as we have seen, is convenient both to experimental and theoretical chemists.
— Charles Coulson