c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
On a nightstand in a teenager’s room, a glass vase filled with violets leans precariously against a wall. The only thing saving the vase from a thousand-piece death on the hardwood floor is the groove in the nightstand’s surface that catches the bottom of vase, and of course the wall itself. The violets, nearly a week old, droop in the light of a waning gibbous moon. Wrinkled petals are already piling up on the floor between the nightstand and the wall, and a girl only six days sixteen stares at the dying bouquet from her bed.
— Jay  Nichols, Emily Smiles for April
My motto? Don’t trust someone who is just as cagey as yourself." "What kind of detective are you?” “A lousy one and proud of it. I write, remember?” She looked down at her hand & laughed. “Berretta doesn’t make lighters.” "Why I was a writer! My life revolved around fiction. I could make something up""She looked down at her hand & laughed. “Berretta doesn’t make lighters.” "So they're not Tolstoy, they're a little shorter...Okay, okay a lot. Go ahead, read my mystery series anyway." "A detective has their boundaries especially me. So mine shifted occasionally...okay a lot" “Beat it, Buster. My temper and this mace have a hair trigger.”“Interference could be lethal.” I got right up in his face, hissing, “Don’t push me, I’m hormonal.”I'm not really a lousy detective, just rough around the edges.
— Peggy A. Edelheit
How charming. The king and his little princess knocking on my covens door.” Ursula sighed dramatically. “What do you insolent merfolks want with me now? I swear I haven’t eaten any of your children.”-Ursula
— Khalia Hades, Ariel's Demise
She probably fell asleep and was washed away by the tortoise waves!”-Arista
— Khalia Hades, Ariel's Demise
Father, what are you to do now?”Triton’s sneer grew scarier. “She broke the law.” turning away from the terrified faces of his daughters. “She must die.
— Khalia Hades, Ariel's Demise
It’s okay to dress up like another person, but never try to be someone else. Just try to be yourself, because that’s what makes you special. Oh, and watch out if a dragon ever starts to dance ballet.
— Jeff Hutchins, Denton the Dragon in Tales of Bubbleland
Gareth Miller grabbed the beer first, then the hotdog, because if there’s one thing you don’t want to be caught dead without at these sorts of events it’s beer. The hotdog was strictly for show, a prop, a way of blending in.Burst of static in his right ear: “G-man, you read me? What’s yo’ twenty, dawg?”Gareth departed the concession stand, stopped, looked down at his hands, and tossed the hotdog into the first trash receptacle he saw. Raising his wrist to his mouth, he spoke into the cuff of his long-sleeved tee. “Concession stand, Section B. Over.”Allowing his hand to linger by his chin, he gingerly scratched his cheek as if he had meant to do it all along. The same voice: “Yo, I’m in position. Ready when you is.”Gareth cringed while crossing the wide concourse, checking both directions. The giant hallway was the main drag of a ghost town, its only residents a solitary custodian sweeping debris into a portable waste bin and the concession crew to his rear.
— Jay  Nichols, Uprising
A steel door clapped open as a guard stepped from the bulletproof viewing station across the hall. "Adams!" "That you?" "I told you, I don't know-" The cop pointed straight at him. "Jeffrey Adams! Front and center!" The black man helped him rise to his feet. "Ain't everybody gets called back from the pit, man. Question is, what are you gonna do when you find out who you are?
— Davis Bunn, The Lazarus Trap
Dies iral, dies illaSolvet Saeclum in FavillaTeste David cum SilyllaThat Day of Wrath, that day of burningSeer and Sibly speak concerningAll the world to ashes turning
— George Henry Smith, Scourge of the Blood Cult
All of a sudden, life became too much to bear. Just like that, for no particular reason. Because there was a child’s corpse in the fridge on rue Parthenais. Because I had to start all over again from scratch, one more time. Because I had rolled my rock to the top of the hill and now it was rolling back down again. The times before, I’d always managed to put on a brave face. But there comes a time when you just don’t feel strong enough to look for another place to live and go shopping again for clothes and dishes and cutlery and scouring pads and toilet paper. This was one of those times. When I got back to the hotel, I asked the Barbie at reception for the key to the minibar. It burned in the palm of my hand. I slapped it back down on the counter and ran out. I had to find a meeting.
— Bernard Émond, 8:17 PM, Rue Darling
And why is it all men thinkeverything a woman writes is trivial or trashy-or just plain sillydrivel? Don't men have romantic notions? Don't men dream of findingthe perfect love?
— V.C. Andrews, Flowers in the Attic
Very young children love and demand stories, and can understand complex matters presented as stories, when their powers of comprehending general concepts, paradigms, are almost nonexistent.
— Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales
The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed
— Stephen King, The Gunslinger
We all have scars. Just because mine are hidden doesn’t make them any less painful.
— Nicki Salcedo, All Beautiful Things
Fiction isn't what 'was'. It's 'what if'?
— Richard Peck, A Season of Gifts
I thought I was in love, but it was only a head cold." (Humans)
— Robert    Emmett, Meowing on the Answering Machine
Literature takes us away from our grey everyday experience, but brings us back enriched with new sensibilities.
— Willie van Peer
The only way that America can protect its prosperity and political stability will be to depopulate the Third World? Should we be surprised that the AIDS virus showed up about 1975? Do you understand what the term "depopulate" means?
— Chuck Palahniuk, Rant
That's science fiction shit," "It's only fiction until science catches up.
— J.D. Robb
Picture time travel as nothing more than knocking your half-read book to the floor and losing your place. You pick up the book and open the pages to a scene too early or late, but never exactly where you’d been reading.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Rant
While the stories are fiction, the journey is real.
— C.J.  Peterson
A bad leader wouldn't stress the importance of staying together to stop the enemy. You want peace? You can't forgive the enemy, if you can't forgive your men for losing faith. You can't force every one single Union deserter to fight, but I know, only you can inspire every deserter to fight for their cause." - Amelia Raht
— Monet Polny, The Lincoln Spy
Live in your dreams, not your past.
— Curt Rude
Forcing the muse to let thoughts flow; equals to pushing a child, into labor.
— Aniruddha Sastikar
It's your destiny to be here, Dana.""Oh really. How nice. Is it Brandon's destiny to be here too?""Yep.
— James L. Rubart, Soul's Gate
Isn’t antimatter what fuels the U.S.S.Enterprise?
— Dan Brown, Angels & Demons
When I write fiction, I struggle to decide the fate of two people created by my mind and spend countless hours to give them a happy ending. God, the Almighty has created infinite human beings till date and runs all our lives with such ease. He is the BEST WRITER of all.
— Shahla Khan
The human condition is such that we can only stomach so much imagination. We need for things to be labeled either fiction or nonfiction. There is no section in between.
— J.W. Lord
Just because someone is on your path, it doesn't mean that they're on your journey.
— Lee M. Sapp, Pastor June and the Coveters
...and still the hands did their trick, like over-eager dogs that want to do their rolling—over trick for you not once or twice but all night.
— Stephen King, The Gunslinger
With out freedom nothing has value, Free agency is the only true key to happiness.
— M.H. DuMond
If you have no idea what I’m about to do, just watch and wait..then you’ll see time spin to a stop right before your eyes..and you’ll forget that world you once knew
— Lenise Lee, RISE
Who wants to go down the creepy, smelly staircase into God only knows what?" Brandon said."I'm going," Dana said."I'm with you." Reece stared at Brandon."Why not?" Brandon shrugged. "It's not like we have the chance of bumping into anything, say, demonic. Right?
— James L. Rubart, Soul's Gate
Man determines to dictate your turn, but God determines your time. It was Saul's turn, but it was David's time. Don't wait for your turn, wait for your time.
— Lee M. Sapp, Pastor June and the Righteous
Tonight let's slay some dragons.
— James L. Rubart, Soul's Gate
Max is short for General Maximus Decimus Meridius.
— James L. Rubart, Soul's Gate
Brandon tilted his head back and closed his eyes. Unbelievable. He had his name. God had given it. Just like Reece said he would.
— James L. Rubart, Soul's Gate
Kate stops grinding the knife and begins to pass it over the length of the stone. Turning her wrist, she pulls the blade, swiping one side after the other, honing it to a fine edge. She wipes it dry with an old cloth and picks up a long piece of dark leather. One end of the strop she ties to the knob on the back of her chair, then holds it taught with her left hand. She counts in her head as she passes the blade over the length of the leather, flipping it at the bottom and the top of each pass. When she gets to twenty, she releases her hold on the strop and looks closely at the knife blade. Even in the dim light of the room, it shines.
— Kari Aguila, Women's Work
Ô, wine!, the truth-serum so potent that all those who wish to live happy lives should abstain from drinking it entirely!... except of course when they are alone.
— Roman Payne, The Wanderess
Our aim is to make the world more beautiful than it was when we came into it. It can be done. You can do it--love yourself
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Welcome to the Monkey House
..giving power to negative thoughts or fears was bringing ideas to life in physical world,idea in mind became emotion in heart,emotion turned into words spoken,written,painted,strummed across guitar strings,or vibrantly held note by Tibetan singing bowl, thoughts affected physical world.
— Christina Westover, The Man Who Followed Jack Kerouac
You will come across people who always affirm by everything you say, but at the hour of need, they simply disappear! Stay away from such people or simply don't fall for their promises.
— K. Hari Kumar
Shared emotions experienced by two souls,empathy on unequivocal level which Davey believed would change entire species of mankind if only secret of empathy could be telepathically shared with humanity,one soul after another, until every soul understood true meaning of love.
— Christina Westover, The Man Who Followed Jack Kerouac
Writing a book with completely fictitious characters is like running a democracy, centered around a capital state. You constantly live with the fear & suspicion that one of the characters will start an uncontrollable rebellion.
— Shomprakash Sinha Roy
I loved the feeling of finally falling in love to someone who would love me back.
— Kristine Cuevas, Not a Melodious Harmony
He never had been good at arguing with women
—  they tapped into pools of resentment over slights that had steeped for years.
It is completely raw, the sort of thing I feel free to do with the door shut—it’s the story undressed, standing up in nothing but its socks and undershorts.
— Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Don't forget to wind the restricted clock and put the confidential cat out.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Welcome to the Monkey House
A story has to break your heart or it's not worth telling.
— Marty Rubin
Homo Americanus is going to go on speaking and writing the way he always has, no matter what dictionary he owns.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Welcome to the Monkey House
..home INSIDE is home shining brightly above all homes in physical world.
— Christina Westover, The Man Who Followed Jack Kerouac
Energy manipulation took place completely in mind,same way believing in telepathy caused telepathic abilities to grow STRONGER.
— Christina Westover, The Man Who Followed Jack Kerouac
Here’s what happens when a single mom meets New York City’s hottest fireman…“Then…seductively…as if he received instruction not from the FDNY’s training school but at Chippendale’s…he slowly inches each suspender off his bare shoulders.”“You must know that exhilarating feeling of a man’s body on top of yours, all that power and muscle pressing you into the bed, the glorious taste of his tongue in your mouth, the manly scent that washes over you and makes you want to melt underneath him.”“Let’s not forget about his nine inches of shapely fireman hose dangling so close in front of my face the scent launches me into a blissful fever.”“Every place he touches contradicts his chosen profession, because instead of putting out a fire he surely starts one.”“I’m so darn helpless in the arms of this powerful, young, ripped personification of New York’s Bravest that I feel myself about to erupt in the most earth shattering explosion since Mount Vesuvius last announced her presence.”“I wonder if he could be enticed to show us a few maneuvers on the brass pole.”“He orchestrates his own personal opera, inspiring high notes with kisses and licks along my elongated nipples, and deep moans with hands that caress my belly.”“We are drawn uncontrollably to each other and have no power to resist, only the tremendous desire to experience everything in its most intense form.
— Isabella Johns, My Hot Fireman
Somebody will beat both [contents and price] sooner or later because that is good old Free Enterprise, where the consumer benefits from battles between jolly green giants.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Welcome to the Monkey House
He had had no experience in asking for a job with a big organization, and Mr. Dilling was making him aware of what a fine art it was--if you couldn't run a machine. A duel was under way.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Welcome to the Monkey House
Defining moment in new telepathist's life, moment when intuitive individual learns most of society isn't telepathic, doesn't see auras,doesn't know what life on ethereal astral plane is like.
— Christina Westover, The Man Who Followed Jack Kerouac
Never underestimate what teens can understand or do. They're smart, creative, and fresh-minded. I wish I was one.
— Brook Tesla, iPooKee
You can’t blame yourself for what Socrates did. Those birds came because he wanted them to come, at least a part of him did. The pissed off part. Let that roll around in your brain for a while.”Jamie considered this. “No, Eddie. The hurt part, that’s what did it.”The crow shrieked again. It seemed louder, and that meant it was closer. Or maybe it was another crow, maybe several. Jamie and Eddie looked toward the sky, listening to the screams. Jamie spoke first.“We can’t let it happen again. We may be the only ones who know the truth about what Socrates can do.” “That thought probably has occurred to Socrates too.
— Kenneth C. Goldman, Of A Feather
The grass and the vines and the willow tree were all so lush and vividly green that he was slightly awed by them. Their location within an alcove of a cliff made all of it more remarkable. It was such an unexpected place for something so beautiful, like an oasis in the middle of a barren desert.
— Katie Lynn Johnson, Amulet of Elusion
I did not want to set my world alight, to watch it burn because of the sister I had come to love too much.
— Sarah Swainson
To get here had been painful, but for once in my life I felt free.
— Sarah Swainson, To My Last Friend
It was as though everything that mattered was encapsulated in that last moment of my blissful state of oblivion.
— Sarah Swainson, To My Last Friend
...don’t discount intuition. It holds more wisdom than technology can ever afford
— Jack C. Monroe
It is not so much as to say that something has occured; but to describe the very essence of the occurance. One must take hold of his readers and pull them into his world...the world that he has penned, with the utmost care and attentiveness. And then, when the readers are fully submerged in this magnificently crafted place of wonder; they will see, and touch, and smell, and feel all the elements of the author's imagination.
— Jason W. Blair
Truth has a resonance to it that fills the cracks where falsehoods lie.
— Rick DeStefanis, The Gomorrah Principle
Novel is a particular form of narrative./ And narrative is a phenomenon which extends considerably beyond the scope of literature; it is one of the essential constituents of our understanding of reality. From the time we begin to understand language until our death, we are perpetually surrounded by narratives, first of all in our family, then at school, then through our encounters with people and reading. - The Novel as Research. (1968)
— Michel Butor
There was a certain amount of initial argumentation about the "meaning" of the balloon; this subsided, because we have learned not to insist on meanings, and they are rarely even looked for now, except in cases involving the simplest, safest phenomena.
— Donald Barthelme, Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts
How have people come to be taken in by The Phenomenon of Man? We must not underestimate the size of the market for works of this kind [pseudoscience/'woo'], for philosophy-fiction. Just as compulsory primary education created a market catered for by cheap dailies and weeklies, so the spread of secondary and latterly tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.
— Peter Medawar
He was a lawyer and he knew that it would be best to trust his journalist friend, but not to tell his own lawyer
— Haidji, SG - Suicide Game
Life was a destiny waiting to be seized.
— Karen Azinger, The Knight Marshal
When he spoke of love, it was in the manner of someone who can recite a phrase in a foreign language but has no idea what it means. He only knows that it sounds pretty.
— Roy L. Pickering Jr., Patches Of Grey
Was love ever easy for anyone? If less complicated, would this make it less appreciated? Perhaps love was difficult for good reason. Perhaps everything on God’s green earth was the result of a flawless plan, even that which seemed most muddled.
— Roy L. Pickering Jr., Patches Of Grey
It was his experience that life worked under the same guidelines as a capitalistic society. In order to get what you wanted, it was usually necessary to give up something in return. Sometimes gaining what you defined as everything meant losing what you most needed.
— Roy L. Pickering Jr., Patches Of Grey
Time had taught him that whether his sins were pardoned or left unforgiven, they would remain committed. Tomorrow he would hopefully choose wiser, with a stronger measure of compassion.
— Roy L. Pickering Jr., Patches Of Grey
I refuse to live in a constant fighting match, Landon. It will not do!' 'And I’ve tried living without you, and it just won’t do!
— J.L. Sheppard, Burdened By Desire
There were many tomorrows to be lived through his children. He could only hope that they would face them more courageously than he had, that his mistakes would serve as warning signs rather than crutches to lean on.
— Roy L. Pickering Jr., Patches Of Grey
He now realized that right and wrong were intertwined notions. His arms could not differentiate between just and unjust causes. They only knew that they were empty.
— Roy L. Pickering Jr., Patches Of Grey
As he drove away from his handiwork, knowing he'd left no survivors, the killer looked at the rising smoke and gave himself a pat on the back for another assignment well done...
— Peprah Boasiako, THE HITMAN: A Short Story
Placing his suitcase on the seat next to him, he unbuttoned his suit jacket, loosened up his necktie and removed his fedora. He kept his custom eye wear on and made himself comfortable, looking more like a Wall Street accountant than the cold killer he'd become...
— Peprah Boasiako, THE HITMAN: A Short Story
A tightrope walker uncertain if he could make it to the other side probably would not. A race car driver wondering if he was taking a turn too fast was likely to lose control. If a man feared death, whether his own or the taking of another's, death would surely come calling.
— Roy L. Pickering Jr., Patches Of Grey
It was just a word. It took nothing from him. It made him feel only as low as he allowed himself to feel. His own brother used it in conversation habitually. But not in the same way - filled with malice, overflowing with insult. He couldn't tear his eyes away, shook with lust for retribution. Six little letters making one huge statement. NIGGER.
— Roy L. Pickering Jr., Patches Of Grey
On occasion we stumble upon what seems to be a truth. Compared to the surrounding blackness, it sparkles and dazzles our eyes. But are these actually truths? Are our eyes really feasting upon light? Or just patches of grey?
— Roy L. Pickering Jr., Patches Of Grey
If you're a ghost," he said, "we mean you no disrespect. And if you're not a ghost, tell me who you are-or you soon will be one
— John Flanagan, The Siege of Macindaw
It is the case that, albeit to a lesser extent, all fictions make their readers live "the impossible", taking them out of themselves, breaking down barriers, and making them share, by identifying with the characters of the illusion, a life that is richer, more intense, or more abject and violent, or simply different from the one that they are confined to by the high-security prison that is real life. Fictions exist because of this fact. Because we have only one life, and our desires and fantasies demand a thousand lives. Because the abyss between what we are and what we would like to be has to be bridged somehow. That was why fictions were born: so that, through living this vicarious, transient, precarious, but also passionate and fascinating life that fiction transports us to, we can incorporate the impossible into the possible and our existence can be both reality and unreality, history and fable, concrete life and marvellous adventure.
— Mario Vargas Llosa, The Temptation of the Impossible: Victor Hugo and "Les Miserables"
You don't turn your back on your destiny.
— Trine Villemann, Queen of Deception
Faction is that hybrid of documented fact and novelistic elaboration.
— Norman Mailer
My life is kinda like a story that if I told you about it, you probably wouldn't believe. It would seem like fiction. That's me.
— Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan
Writing is just building a new world – one character, one place, one maniac at a time.
— Carla H. Krueger
Finally I do like best of all stories whose necessity is in the implied recognition that someplace out there there exists an urgency—a chaos—, an insanity, a misrule of some dire sort which can end life as we know it but for the fact that this very story is written, this order found, this style determined, the worst averted, and we are beneficiaries of that order by being readers.
— Richard Ford, The Granta Book of the American Short Story
Moreover, it is not just that the early documents are silent about so much of Jesus that came to be recorded in the gospels, but that they view him in a substantially different way -- as a basically supernatural personage only obscurely on Earth as a man at some unspecified period in the past, 'emptied' then of all his supernatural attributes (Phil.2:7), and certainly not a worker of prodigious miracles which made him famous throughout 'all Syria' (Mt.4:24). I have argued that there is good reason to believe that the Jesus of Paul was constructed largely from musing and reflecting on a supernatural 'Wisdom' figure, amply documented in the earlier Jewish literature, who sought an abode on Earth, but was there rejected, rather than from information concerning a recently deceased historical individual. The influence of the Wisdom literature is undeniable; only assessment of what it amounted to still divides opinion.
— George Albert Wells
I long for some connection, to the real and those who love them, and hope that my fiction can reach beyond the veil, that I might touch someone and make them feel something…or something.
— Shannon Celebi
Tragedy often gives birth to courage, it offers man a platform to change what will be."Eli Storm, Emanuel Stone And The Phoenix Shadow
— Isaac Solomon
We live in a society that doesn’t offer any support or appreciation for ventures that aren’t clearly articulated and aligned for a goal. A writer gets past this. It’s going to be a mess before you’re finished, and you may not have a name for the mess or understand its utilitarian purposes. There aren't words for everything. For now, we’ll call it the draft of a story.
— Ron Carlson, Ron Carlson Writes a Story
For Honor and the Octagon!
— Karen Azinger, The Steel Queen
And in a land accustomed to so much anguish, Chase tried to be careful with words. His soccer moms began assigningnicknames during the first day of official practice: Difom, Kakas, Kochma, and Maldyok, which roughly translated to Deformed, Carcass, Nightmare, and Bad Eye.He made a new rule regarding nicknames.
— Cole Alpaugh, The Spy's Little Zonbi
What?
— Vicki  Wilson, How to Start Living or Die Trying
I believe that all things happen under the watchful eye of God and the lessons we learn along the way only serve to make us stronger.
— Nancy B. Brewer, The House with the Red Light
A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.
— NIkki Fuentes
It is not my job to explain the story or understand the story or reduce it to a phrase or offer it as being a story about any specific person, place, or thing. My job is to have been true enough to the world of my story that I was able to present it as a forceful and convincing drama. Every story is a kind of puzzle. Many have obvious solutions, and some have no solution at all. We write to present questions, sometimes complicated questions, not to offer easy or not-so-easy answers. Do not be misled by the limited vocabulary the American marketplace uses to describe the possibilities for story and drama. If we’re really writing we are exploring the unnamed emotional facets of the human heart. Not all emotions, not all states of mind have been named. Nor are all the names we have been given always accurate. The literary story is a story that deals with the complicated human heart with an honest tolerance for the ambiguity in which we live. No good guys, no bad guys, just guys: that is, people bearing up the crucible of their days and certainly not always—if ever—capable of articulating their condition.
— Ron Carlson, Ron Carlson Writes a Story
It was only much later that he was made flesh and blood [in the Gospels] on paper. Thus Christ was created as a literary creation.
— Paul Louis Couchoud
Not much of a childhood, Cass. When did you get to play?”With a frown, she said, “I played.”“You took apart your robot dog.
— Michelle O'Leary, Here There Be Dragons
Sin’s cold, calculating, and dangerous. She scares the shit outta me. I wouldn’t want to meet her in a dark alley and that’s the truth. Compared to her, you’re a damned Sun angel.”“You just don’t know her,” Cass said in a soft voice, her mouth curving the slightest bit. “She’s really very sweet.”“Sure,” Nick scoffed. “Sweet as sugar. Let’s get back to why you won’t let me put my hands on you.
— Michelle O'Leary, Here There Be Dragons
I had finally become aware of how much I was capable of, how little I had to lose, and how deep into Douglas's soft sand I had sunk. Magellan's letters, which Douglas had recited, had become part of my being. It was as if I was right there with Magellan, following every curve of his pen as he wrote down his words to his beloved ones confiding his secret. I had become the ink, and the tip was tattooing my path. I was going to follow his dream, but still, I wished I knew why.
— Celma Ribeiro
He told himself she wasn’t really such a bad person, she was just a pest, she was sticky, there was something misplaced in her make-up, something that kept her from fading clear of people when they wanted to be in the clear.
— David Goodis, Dark Passage
It is through hearing stories about wicked stepmothers, lost children, good but misguided kings, wolves that suckle twin boys, youngest sons who receive no inheritance but must make their own way in the world, and eldest sons who waste their inheritance on riotous living and go into exile to live with the swine, that children learn or mislearn both what a child and what a parent is, what the cast of characters may be in the drama into which they have been born and what the ways of the world are.
— Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory
. . .but he'd seen elite warriors go down in flames enough times to struggle with the sovereignty of God yet yield to it
— Ronie Kendig, Trinity: Military War Dog
I could hardly get to sleep for dreaming of revenge.
— Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
If his relative success hadn't made him happy, it had, on average, made him less unhappy.
— Adelle Waldman, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.
I knew that it was impossible for us to be kept apart for too long.
— Erica Sehyun Song, The Pax Valley
Ridley nodded. 'She told me I couldn't ever tell General Harding or anybody else. Told me I wouldn't be safe.' 'Safe?' Uncle Bob stopped rocking and took the pipe from between his teeth. 'She started in talkin' 'bout you bein' safe, sir?' Ridley nodded again, and that's when Uncle Bob grinned. 'Well, shoot . . . you ain't lost her yet, sir. Not altogether, anyhow. Any female goes to talkin' 'bout you bein' safe . . . hmmph. There still be somethin' left in her heart for ya.
— Tamera Alexander, To Whisper Her Name
He had a bad habit of initially zeroing in on one or two things he liked about every new girl he found himself interested in, as if to justify his attraction.
— Adelle Waldman, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.
When people pose the question, are you “coxom”, Tom Conrad? I like to pose a question back at them: Is J.K. Rowling actually a witch? Is Thomas Harris the no. 1 serial killer in the the US, did Yann Martell really spend a lifetime eating pie?Of course, as far as I know J.K. Rowling is not a witch, but instead is a rather lovely and talented writer. As for that Thomas Harris (equally talented), I very much suspect he isn’t actually a serial killer at all, or if he is, he’s involved in the biggest case of double bluff… ever! As for Yann Martell, well, as everyone with half a brain knows his book is actually concerned with a mathematical constant, so ignore the dumb pie joke. Hm :/
— Tom Conrad, Rich Pickings for Ravens
whatever beauty she thought she might have possessed she realized had only been through her husband's assessment of her
— Molly Ringwald, When it Happens to You
Does bad luck come in 3's...or is it multiples of 3?
— Tara Ford, Calling All Services
I believe a family just isn’t complete without skeletons. My dearest momma clean bit off my daddy’s nose right around the time they divorced.
— Cole Alpaugh, The Spy's Little Zonbi
You aren't allowed out of the graveyard -it's aren't, by the way, not amn't, not these days-because it's only in the graveyard that we can keep you safe. This is where you live and this is where those who love you can be found. Outside would not be safe for you. Not yet.
— Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
Our pendants glowed in unison and I understood that they represented us – Siren and human intertwined for eternity.
— Erica Sehyun Song, The Pax Valley
Write about the thing that scares you most or your most private confession and you'll never have a problem coming up with decent fiction.
— Don Roff
The claim at the heart of this book has been carefully researched by several generations of scholars and is orthodox in academic circles, if not beyond. Christians under the Roman Empire were neither constantly persecuted nor martyred in huge numbers for their faith. They were prosecuted from time to time for alleged sedition, holding illegal meetings or refusing to sacrifice to the emperor. They were, like other convicts, sometimes tortured and executed in horrible ways. They seem to have been regarded by many Romans with distaste as a particularly silly superstition. But Christian stories of thousands of individual and mass martyrdoms over centuries have at best a limited basis in historical fact, and in many cases are sheer fiction.
— Teresa Morgan
I watched her shadow merge with the darker colours of the deep sea.
— Erica Sehyun Song, The Pax Valley
Noriega wound up like a baseball pitcher on top of the bed and hurled the small gun, but was low and outside for a ball. His tight-fitting house dress was bunched up high on his chubby thighs, exposing olive drab underwear.I see London, I see France, I see a crazy dictator’s underpants!Chase’s thoughts raced.
— Cole Alpaugh, The Spy's Little Zonbi
Limp finally spoke. “Do you think you could kill a person and not get all crazy about it?
— Cole Alpaugh, The Spy's Little Zonbi
Bearing witness from the sides of the room, ten or more lepers shouted at the bizarre scene, “Diable! Diable!” And then chants of some sort, or prayers, followed by more shouts of “Diable!” They were hurling these words at Moreau like stones.
— Cole Alpaugh, The Spy's Little Zonbi
I have read that long ago there was a land of glass castles that sank beneath the sea. It was not called Atlantis, but Lyonesse. This happened before history and across the ocean, but when I was little I wondered about that place, how it could be so beautiful and so lost. Sometimes it seemed that the land around my New England home was like that flooded country, with mud where the streets of gold should be and mayflies swarming where there should be lovely fishes, but here and there a shard of crystal to call the heart to beauty. --"Wetlands," in Phoebe.
— Claudia Putnam
I beam back at her. Fuck the surgery, fuck the kids, fuck the men in our lives or no longer in our lives. This is sweet. When she catches up with me, I say, How many, just how many forty-plus women would do that?We gaze back up at the face bleeding into the chute we’ve just skied. We *did* that, I crow. Someone should love us just for that. --Hangfire
— Claudia Putnam
The monkey liked most humans. They left food cans outside their homes for his family to rummage through in the morningsun. Some yelled and threw sticks, but were slow and didn’t bite. Humans were mostly harmless.
— Cole Alpaugh, The Spy's Little Zonbi
Kids never jumped head first from the top ledge. Never. It seemed forever beforeStoney came back to the surface. Most of the white bubbles had already disappeared.
— Cole Alpaugh, The Spy's Little Zonbi
Whenever I’d get howlin’ over something, he’d grab my ass up from wherever I was and head straight for the john. Momma said my head would get banged up along the way, but she said itwas probably bein’ dunked under water that made me stupid.
— Cole Alpaugh, The Spy's Little Zonbi
Six nervous wives at the sink, each quiet as a queen on a chessboard.
— Genie Frisbee, Invented August: An Imperfect Escape to Capri
The beer gave Penn a headache immediately
—  she blinked like a mermaid struck by sunshine.
Allegedly, allegedly I say, the R.G.A. were extremely miffed of portrait painted of their monarch, King Tingaling XX, by Master. Portrait apparently, as it’s yet t’be unveiled, depicts King Tingaling XX in rather compromisin’ position with a pineapple, a wad of cash and his favourite pig, Buttercup.
— Elias Zapple, Duke & Michel: The Mysterious Corridor
Grandpa said that we could solve a lot of the world’s problems if we considered cats and dogs edible. Like the neighbor’s dog who goes to the bathroom in his flower garden. And know what else?
— Cole Alpaugh, The Spy's Little Zonbi
It’d been a long time since they’d been together, but as close as they were physically, they’d never been so far apart in every other way.
— Jennifer Faye, Snowbound with the Soldier
She smiled sinisterly. Light mist started to slowly swirl around us. All I could see was her, the tall rocks and the white wall. She beckoned to me. I took a step and another. I was now ankle deep into the water. The mysterious girl smiled like a predator.
— Erica Sehyun Song, The Pax Valley
I was slightly thankful when Mom finally came out and unlocked the car. It was warm and toasty inside and it smelt like home. There was not the slightest smell of something that didn’t belong home.
— Erica Sehyun Song, The Pax Valley
A couple hours went by, and the storm began to turn back to the sea. The dark clouds rolled away, leaving white, fluffy ones in their place. We were safe, and the rock in the distance was still there. We stepped out of the car and walked over to the rock, noticing the families of seals were back again. The seals were strong and ready to make it through any storm that would fall their way. My parents’ love was still there; that is what love means. I envy that love, and I hoped to find it someday... and I did.
— Joseph McGinnis, This Shadow Follows Me
They say it came first from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Thainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles. Fukú Americanus, or more colloquially, fukú-generally a curse or a doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and Doom of the New World.
— Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The other one was filled with loud and obnoxious tourists. Always boasting on winning a sand castle competition and seeing who could get tanned first. What a whacky bunch of people.
— Erica Sehyun Song, The Pax Valley
Have you lost your mind? What have I told you Charlie about whales? You can’t MANHANDLE THEM!
— Erica Sehyun Song, The Pax Valley
My job takes up many daylight hours, it wakes me in the still of night and fills my head with ghosts and monsters but I love it, telling stories is what I was born to do.
— Ken Scott
Although nobody could ever know about our friendship, that wasn’t going to stop us from being together.
— Erica Sehyun Song, The Pax Valley
She snorted in amusement at my remark. “When are the guards going to start to notice?” Keith peered into the distance. “Starting now,
— Erica Sehyun Song, The Pax Valley
He sent it flying at full speed. It jumped six times as well, sending ripples across the sea. The small splashes of foam turned into miniature rainbows as they caught the light of the evening sun setting behind the clouds.
— Erica Sehyun Song, The Pax Valley
Fiction in general holds little interest for me. Novels, in particular, arouse more suspicion than intrigue. It truly baffles me that any practitioner of make-believe should (especially in this day and age) feel the need to produce anything so gratuitous. The fact that certain examples of this fare can approach the length of your average dictionary seems inherently absurd.
— Dan Garfat-Pratt, Citations: A Brief Anthology
I distracted Herbert by pretending to trip and break a bone. Ethan darted around to the red golf cart with a cocky smile on his face. He put the key in ignition, and the vehicle roared to life. “Hey,” Herbert shouted, snapping his attention to Ethan. I sprang up and ran up to Ethan. He pulled me in the cart and stomped on the gas pedal. We shot through the automatic doors with Herbert on our tail.  “Go faster!” I cheered. My brother smacked the steering wheel. “I can’t; it’s a golf cart.
— Erica Sehyun Song, The Pax Valley
I closed my eyes and dived into foreign water.
— Erica Sehyun Song, The Pax Valley
Again Gabe looked back at Michael, hoping he was about to step in, but all he did was give him a nod. A nod? Really? I don't need a nod. I need someone to stop this! Gabe thought.
— Wendy Owens, Cursed
I told you; I am Arianna, the Siren, your Guardian, and how is a Guardian supposed to do her job if she is clueless about the Guardianee?
— Erica Sehyun Song, The Pax Valley
I could have drowned…and my brother didn’t even care.
— Erica Sehyun Song
I could have drowned today. If they hadn’t been screaming my name so loudly and if I hadn’t woken up, I would have drowned.
— Erica Sehyun Song, The Pax Valley
Everything was quiet now. It was even too freaky quiet. The house seemed big without anyone else inside. It felt lonely
—  like a ghost town.
A long time ago, there was a little girl called Mary. Now Mary, she was warned several times not to go to her neighbor’s house. Her neighbor was a grandmother. But Mary hardly listened, so she snuck off one night to spy on her. She tried the front door first, and it creaked open. Then suddenly, she heard a squeaking noise upstairs. She followed it – climbed up the wooden stairs where half of it was already rotten. She heard the squeaking noise again. It was coming from the library. She opened the door and hid behind a couch. She peered out, and she saw the grandmother.” Dave paused to drain his cup of coffee before continuing. My heart thudded so loudly, I thought that everyone could hear it. “So Mary gasped in disbelief as she heard the squeaking noise again, and the grandmother’s rocking chair was not moving at all. Then the grandmother opened her eyes and looked directly at her, holding her gaze steadily and sharply, and then suddenly, BOO!
— Erica Sehyun Song, The Pax Valley
If a woman chooses to support her husband and become First Lady, I believe she must do so with the understanding that the public expects the full-meal deal.
— Venita Ellick
People vote for whom they believe will be the best president and representative for our country. The First Lady is not on the ballot.
— Venita Ellick
A writer looks at an issue and asks, 'What if this were to occur? Or what if that was thrown into the mix? What would that look like?
— Venita Ellick
An elegantly crafted novel, "The Reluctant First Lady" clearly documents author Venita Ellick as an exceptionally accomplished writer able to skillfully weave memorable characters into a riveting story line from beginning to end. As engaging as it is entertaining, "The Reluctant First Lady" is highly recommended for both personal reading lists and community library contemporary fiction collections.
— Midwest Book Review August 2013
The last image I registered was Ethan and my hand – linked, bound and unbreakable.
— Erica Sehyun Song
Day in and day out we learn to train and grow as Guardians. We do as we're told and follow the rules. We all work hard. Now it's our turn to watch some demons tremble in fear! It's our turn to watch the hunters become the hunted. Who's ready to see some fighting? Better yet, who wants to see what our great protector is made of?
— Wendy Owens, Cursed
You have always known they exist. Everyone feels their presence. Few know the truth. The world of Real Immortals is about to be revealed!
— John T. Montgomery
Look how we have made our broken hearts soar.
— Maria Testa, Becoming Joe Dimaggio
If a woman were elected president, would our nation expect her husband to be the official White House host?
— Venita Ellick
That was when I saw their hate come out. They fought on the front lawn. Balloons and my birthday cake stood witness as I watched every regretful blow from my mother. I knew my sister was at war with my mother, but I never knew what her cruelty was capable of. My mother’s military was larger than Jayme’s. My mother already had my father, and she had her five children, including me.
— Joseph McGinnis, This Shadow Follows Me
We have all been fooled into believing in people who are entirely imaginary--made-up prisoners in a hypothetical panopticon. But the point isn't whether or not you believe in imaginary people; it's whether or not you want to."I think I'll stick with reality," I said, handing Cassidy back her phone.She stared at it, and then me, disappointed. "I'd think you of all people would want to escape.""Imaginary prisoners are still prisoners.
— Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything
In fiction: we find the predictable boring. In real life: we find the unpredictable terrifying.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Everybody is equally weak on the inside, just that some present their ruins as new castles and become kings –
— Simona Panova, Nightmarish Sacrifice
The writer's characters must stand before us with a wonderful clarity, such continuous clarity that nothing they do strikes us as improbable behavior for just that character, even when the character's action is, as sometimes happens, something that came as a surprise to the writer himself. We must understand, and the writer before us must understand, more than we know about the character; otherwise neither the writer nor the reader after him could feel confident of the character's behavior when the character acts freely.
— John Gardner, The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers
I thought if only we could go onand meet again, shy as strangers.
— Lisel Mueller
Strength and victory... What he would never praise himself for, but whose loss was his most obsessive fear.
— Simona Panova, Nightmarish Sacrifice
Why are you so anxious to destroy in the name of a vulgar, commonplace sense of truth, this reality which comes to birth attracted and formed by the magic of the stage itself, which has indeed more right to live here than you, since it is much truer than you -- if you don't mind my saying so?
— Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author
There may always be another reality to make fiction of the truth we think we've arrived at.
— Christopher Fry
The difference between nonfiction and fiction is that fiction must be absolutely believable.
— Mark Twain
Shocked my old friend from China, Deja Vu, when I turned up at his door without notice.
— Nikhil Sharda, Sans Destination
I came to the party with the sole purpose of getting completely shit-faced, to be perfectly honest. That was it, that was The Plan from the very beginning. I wanted more than anything that ever regrettable, forgetting-everything-you-learned-as-a-toddler kind of wasted that only either the completely stupid venture into or the complete novice (given how naive I was I think I fall more into the latter category). It was a very simple plan, but I like to think the simplest ones tend to be the most effective. The Plan sure as hell didn't involve everything else that happened that night, as all of that occurred quite naturally on its own.
— J.C. Joranco, Say It Ain't So
How long has it been since I entered this blackness? Has it been days, months, or years? I’m stuck here with my mind, my thoughts, my memories, and my nightmares.
— Shari J. Ryan, Schasm
That was a stupid idea I made up while drunk. Why did someone build that?
— Warren Ellis
I write fiction not for my readers and not for myself. I write fiction for the sake of those odd heroic characters that are contained therein. They are counting on me as much as I am counting on them.
— Nicholas Trandahl
She opened her eyes and looked into his rather intensely.  "What?" Alex asked.  "This cannot be." "What can't be?" Alex asked her, more bafflement in his voice this time.  "I have been reading people all my life. I can even read cats and dogs. I've been doing it all my life and i've been here longer than the two of you put together." "And?" Alex wanted to get to the point. Whatever the truth may be, he just wanted to hear it, wanted it on the table before them so he could get this over with and they can go home.  "AND.....you are the first person that has nothing for me to see." "And here I was hoping you'd say I'd win the lottery or get married to a supermodel or something." Alex said, starting to laugh.  "You don't understand. I don't see anything, anything at all. There is nothing to you, nothing but what I see before me." "So....what does that mean?" "It means you don't exist.
— J.C. Joranco, Halfway to Nowhere
As the sun went down outside, the television screen started completely lighting up the room in obnoxiously bright colors at hyperactive speeds. The conversation had been slowly rising in volume and frequency, as everyone started becoming more delinquent and the social boundaries slowly wore away. I don't remember what any of them said because I wasn't honestly paying any attention. I was focusing on my own misery and trying to numb the inner demons, the ugly things Thomas claimed came from the Outside World. Yet, to me, it wasn't outside, but rather INSIDE, as in my own head. I kept hearing Charley's voice from bits and pieces of conversations we had, laughter that I'll never hear ever again.
— J.C. Joranco, Say It Ain't So