Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm not one of these 'the characters write themselves; the story just fell out of me' kind of writers. Wish it was like that.
When I find research really rewarding is when one piece of information gives you an idea for a story. That's when it's great.
People die of broken hearts. They have heart attacks. And it's the heart that hurts most when things go wrong and fall apart.
Yes, I know it. In the darkness of my dark beating heart, I know. He'd have loved it alright. You see? Even Death Has A Heart.
Together, they would watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse, and they would smile at the beauty of destruction.
I think 'The Lord Of The Rings' is the mother of all cult books, because you can be in that cult and not even know you're in it.
I always marvel at the humans' ability to keep going. They always manage to stagger on even with tears streaming down their faces.
Do we spend most of our days trying to remember or to forget? Do we spend most of our time running towards or away from our lives?
He's most likely robbing the bank as a paycheck on the world for winning the ugliness prize at his local fete three years running.
..As always, she was carrying the washing. Rudy was carrying two buckets of cold water, or as he put it, two buckets of future ice.
When she came to write her story, she would wonder when the books and the words started to mean not just something, but everything.
Because you don't learn anything unless you can find the patience to read. TV takes that away from you. It robs you from your mind.
If a guy like you can stand up and do what you did, then maybe everyone can. Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of.
My own eyes try to sleep, but they don't. They stay wide awake as time snarls forward and silence drops down, like measured thought.
Something I'd like to be perfect at? ... Loving you,' I said. The words climbed from my mouth. 'I'd want to be perfect at loving you.
Sometimes you read a book so special that you want to carry it around with you for months after you've finished just to stay near it.
I can promise you that the world is a factory. The sun stirs it, the humans rule it. And I remain. I carry them away.- spoken by death
Smile with instinct, then lick your wounds in the darkest of dark corners. Trace the scars back to your own fingers and remember them.
It was one of those moments of perfect tiredness, of having conquered not only the work at hand, but the night who had blocked the way.
It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces and they stagger on, coughing and searching, and finding.
I think I'm always somehow interested in characters who want to make one perfect thing, to transcend humanness, even if only for a moment.
That's typically what writers do; we just sit around complaining most of the time. And the better things are going, the more they complain.
Papa was a man with silver eyes, not dead ones. Papa was an accordion! But his bellows were all empty. Nothing went in and nothing came out.
Goodbye, Papa, you saved me. You taught me to read. No one can play like you. I'll never drink champagne. No one can play like you." -Liesel
She was like a lone angel floating above the surface of the earth, laughing with delight because she could fly but crying out of loneliness.
Somewhere, far down, there was an itch in his heart, but he made it a point not to scratch it. He was afraid of what might come leaking out.
When we move apart, she looks at me again, till a small tear lifts itself up in her eye. It trips out to find a wrinkle and follows it down.
The point is, Ilsa Hermann had decided to make suffering her triumph. When it refused to let go of her, she succumbed to it. She embraced it.
A halo surrounded the grim reaper nun, Sister Maria. (By the way-I like this human idea of the grim reaper. I like the scythe. It amuses me.)
She even touches Jimmy's face on the photos, and I see what it is to love someone like Milla loved that man. Her fingertips are made of love.
Often I wish this would all be over, Liesel, but then somehow you do something like walk down the basement steps with a snowman in your hands.
A REASSURING ANNOUNCEMENT Please, be calm, despite that previous threat. I am all bluster - I am not violent. I am not malicious. I am a result.
It is early, early morning. It's that time when it's still dark but you know the day is coming. Blue is bleeding through black. Stars are dying.
I was lucky: I feel like I've written four books that mean something to me, and one book that means everything to me, and that's 'The Book Thief.'
Nothing comes naturally to me...I have to work and rework and that's where the ideas come from - from years of working on it and thinking about it.
The dilemma, of course, is that such people save their most important words for after, when the surrounding humans are unlucky enough to find them.
I look at her wish we could go inside and make love on the couch. Dive inside each other. Take each other. Make each other. Nothing happens, though.
The sky is blue today, Max, and there is a big long cloud, and it's stretched out, like a rope. At the end of it, the sun is like a yellow hole. . .
Ed?" Ritchie says later. We're still standing in the water. "There's only one thing I want." "What's that, Ritchie?" His answer is simple. "To want.
I'm asking you, I'm begging you, could you please shut your mouth for just five minutes?" You can imagine the reaction. They ended up in the basement.
an expression of surprise falls from her face, though she's trying to keep it. it breaks off and she seems to catch it and fidget with it in her hands.
Five hundred souls. I carried them in my fingers, like suitcases. Or I'd throw them over my shoulder. It was only the the children I carried in my arms.
The night is alive with stars, and when I lie down and look up, I get lost up there. I feel like I’m falling, but upward, into the abyss of sky above me.
In years to come, he would be a giver of bread, not a stealer - proof again of the contradictory human being. So much good, so much evil. Just add water.
When death captures me,' the boy vowed, 'he will feel my fist on his face.' Personally, I quite like that. Such stupid gallantry. Yes. I like that a lot.
A small but noteworthy note. I've seen so many young men over the years who think they're running at other young men. They are not. They are running at me.
The flyscreen door slammed behind me. My feet dragged. I reached each arm into the jacket. Warm sleeves. Crumpled collar. Hands in pockets. Okay. I walked.
I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that's where they begin. Their great skills is their capacity to escalate.
I think to be writer you have to enjoy being alone. I was a loner as a teenager and was always drawn to characters in books and films who were at the fringes.
Mystery bores me. It chores me. I know what happens and so do you. It's the machinations that wheel us there that aggravate, perplex, interest, and astound me.