Sandra Newman

Giving a reader a sex scene that is only half right is like giving her half a kitten. It is not half as cute as a whole kitten; it is a bloody, godawful mess. A half-good sex scene is not half as hot; it actually moves into the negative numbers, draining any heat from the surrounding material.

Examining the actual contents of my crying, I found a quailing sludge emotion, with a foul insecticide taste. If it was a peanut, you would spit it out. Yet I was indulging this toxic goo, giving it its head and letting it dictate my actions. People had every good reason to despise me.

All great works start with mistake. Ain’t no exception in this fact.

That sense of the world being the lack of something dogged him for years, and when it stopped dogging him, he felt unmoored. 

Then we all sat around; we were supposed to be awed. I was brattishly unawed.

Then my tears come blinding, and he lead me by the arm. I stumble in the elevator, thinking of that moon rain. Salt that last forever, grief that live beyond all life.

Heather Morris

If you wake up in the morning, it is a good day.

To save one is to save the world.

Remember the small things, and the big things will work themselves out.

I know he is not perfect, but I also know he will always put me first.

We stand in shit but let us not drown in it.

Politics will help you understand the world until you don’t understand it anymore, and then it will get you thrown into a prison camp. Politics and religion both.

How can a race that is spread out across multiple countries be considered a threat?

You will honor them by staying alive, surviving this place and telling the world what happened here.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The library was open, unending, free.

But race is the child of racism, not the father. And the process of naming “the people” has never been a matter of genealogy and physiognomy so much as one of hierarchy. Difference in hue and hair is old. But the belief in the preeminence of hue and hair, the notion that these factors can correctly organize a society and that they signify deeper attributes, which are indelible—this is the new idea at the heart of these new people who have been brought up hopelessly, tragically, deceitfully, to believe that they are white.

You are growing into consciousness, and my wish for you is that you feel no need to constrict yourself to make other people comfortable.

I would not have you descend into your own dream. I would have you be a conscious citizen of this terrible and beautiful world.

I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The library was open, unending, free.

Elin Hilderbrand

Forgiveness is a powerful thing.

Guilt and no guilt: these were the worst things. The only thing worse than the guilt was the fear of getting caught.

When you peered into the windows of someone else's life, you could only guess what was going on.

If you love something, set it free. If it was meant to be, it will come back to you. But this, of course, was bullshit. If you loved something and let it go...it would (hello!) find something else to love.

All her life, Claire had had a problem figuring out where other people ended and she began. All her life, she’d taken on the world’s hurt; she held herself responsible. But why?

To be early is to be on time, to be on time is to be late, to be late is to be forgotten.

It was like we had known all along that the sky was going to fall and then it fell and we pretended to be surprised.

Sometimes you regret the things you do, but they're over and done. Regretting the things you didn't do is tougher because they're still out there, haunting you with the what ifs.

Delia Owens

I wasn't aware that words could hold so much. I didn't know a sentence could be so full.

His dad had told him many times that the definition of a real man is one who cries without shame, reads poetry with his heart, feels opera in his soul, and does what’s necessary to defend a woman.

Autumn leaves don't fall, they fly. They take their time and wander on this their only chance to soar.

Unworthy boys make a lot of noise.

Why should the injured, the still bleeding, bear the onus of forgiveness?

Lot of times love doesn’t work out. Yet even when it fails, it connects you to others and, in the end, that is all you have, the connections.

There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.

Sometimes she heard night-sounds she didn’t know or jumped from lightning too close, but whenever she stumbled, it was the land who caught her. Until at last, at some unclaimed moment, the heart-pain seeped away like water into sand. Still there, but deep. Kya laid her hand upon the breathing, wet earth, and the marsh became her mother.

Dave Pelzer

Childhood should be carefree, playing in the sun; not living a nightmare in the darkness of the soul.

Inside, my soul became so cold I hated everything. I even despised the sun, for I knew I would never be able to play in its warm presence. I cringed with hate whenever I heard other children laughing, as they played outside. My stomach coiled whenever I smelled food that was about to be served to somebody else, knowing it wasn't for me.

One could come from less than humble beginnings, to become a winner from within.

It is important for people to know that no matter what lies in their past, they can overcome the dark side and press on to a brighter world.

Even in its darkest passages, the heart is unconquerable. It is important that the body survives, but it is more meaningful that the human spirit prevails.

I told myself no matter what she did I would not let the bitch take me down.

Joanne Harris

Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.

I let it go. It's like swimming against the current. It exhausts you. After a while, whoever you are, you just have to let go, and the river brings you home.

Children are knives, my mother once said. They don’t mean to, but they cut. And yet we cling to them, don’t we, we clasp them until the blood flows.

She always had that about her, that look of otherness, of eyes that see things much too far, and of thoughts that wander off the edge of the world.

I could do with a bit more excess. From now on I'm going to be immoderate--and volatile--I shall enjoy loud music and lurid poetry. I shall be rampant.

I'd rather be a freak than a clone.

Death should be a celebration. Like a birthday. I want to go up like a rocket when my time comes, and fall down in a cloud of stars, and hear everyone go: ahh!

Some books you read. Some books you enjoy. But some books just swallow you up, heart and soul.

Love not often, but forever.

Places have their own characters. . . . But the people begin to look the same.

You don't write because someone sets assignments! You write because you need to write, or because you hope someone will listen or because writing will mend something broken inside you or bring something back to life.

Dawn French

Funny how women are ashamed of their inner fairy whereas men are forever proudly displaying their inner cowboy or fireman.

There is a latent fairy in all women, but look how carefully we have to secrete her in order to be taken seriously. And fairies come in all shapes, colours, sizes and types, they don't have to be fluffy. They can be demanding and furious if hey like. They do, however, have to wear a tiara. That much is compulsory.

What was I thinking? Fact is I wasn't thinking. I didn't want to think. I wanted to feel.

Two people occupying the same air. Nothing else in common. Just oxygen.

My theory was that if I behaved like a confident, cheerful person, eventually I would buy it myself, and become that. I always had traces of strength somewhere inside me, it wasn't fake, it was just a way of summoning my courage to the fore and not letting any creeping self-doubt hinder my adventures. This method worked then, and it works now. I tell myself that I am the sort of person who can open a one-woman play in the West End, so I do. I am the sort of person who has several companies, so I do. I am the sort of person WHO WRITES A BOOK!

Monica Ali

The thing about getting older is that you don't need everything to be possible any more, you just need things to be certain.

Sometimes I look back and I am shocked. Everyday of my life I have prepared for success, worked for it, waited for it, and you don't notice how the days pass until nearly a lifetime is finished. Then it hits you--the thing you have been waiting for has already gone by. And it was going in the other direction. It's like I've been waiting on the wrong side of the road for a bus that was already full

She touched his hand for the last time. "Oh, Karim, that we have already done. But always there was a problem between us. How can I explain? I wasn't me, and you weren't you. From the very beginning to the very end, we didn't see things. What we did--we made each other up.

If you think you are powerless, then you are.

You can spread your soul over a paddy field, you can whisper to a mango tree, you can feel the earth between your toes and know that this is the place, the place where it begins and ends. But what can you tell to a pile of bricks? The bricks will not be moved.

Her words were as sharp as an eyeful of sand. She never raised her voice. It was the kind of voice that never needed to be raised. It cut words to a fine point and launched them decisively.

Maeve Binchy

I'll understand if you don't want me. But I will be heartbroken. You are all I ever dreamed of and hoped for. You are much, much more. Please know that I didn't think I was mean-minded. But I realize I am. I don't want you to put your arms around me and say it's all right, that you forgive me. I want you to be sure that you do, and my love for you will last as long as I live.

I don't have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turning into confident ducks.

I look placid, you see, that's why people think I'm fine. Inside I worry a lot.

She put her head down on the table and cried all the tears that she knew she should have cried in the past year and a half. But they weren't ready then, they were now.

It was so silly to try to define things by words. What did one person mean by infatuation or obsession and another mean by love. The whole thing couldn't be tidied away with neat little labels.