Quote collection
240 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person. Two people, when they love each other, grow alike in their tastes and habits and pride, but their moral natures (whatever we may mean by that canting expression) are never welded. The base one goes on being base, and the noble one noble, to the end."
"I don't want anyone reading my writing to think about style. I just want them to be in the story."
"She had certain thoughts which were like companions, ideas which were like older and wiser friends."
"Setting ... is accident. Either a building is part of a place, or it is not. Once that kinship is there, time will only make it stronger."
"Merely having seen the season change in a country gave one the sense of having been there for a long time."
"Thea was still under the belief that public opinion could be placated; that if you clucked often enough, the hens would mistake you for one of themselves."
"The revolt against individualism naturally calls artists severely to account, because the artist is of all men the most individual; those who were not have been long forgotten."
"Alexandra sighed. "I have a feeling that if you go away, you will not come back. Something will happen to one of us, or to both. People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always easier to lose than to find. What I have is yours if you care enough about me to take it."
"Sometimes falling in love may look like pure madness to those not experiencing it but that's only because they're not involved. Just because other people don't understand your feelings doesn't mean they're not real or they're not important. You have to trust yourself. Feel what you feel and don't worry about anyone else. Love is about you and your significant other, remember that."
"Dr. Howard Archie had just come up from a game of pool with the Jewish clothier and two traveling men who happened to be staying overnight in Moonstone."
"One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away."
"I have sometimes thought that his bursts of imaginative talk were fatal to his poetic gift. He squandered too much in the heat of personal communication."
"Pittsburgh was even more vital, more creative, more hungry for culture than New York. Pittsburgh was the birthplace of my writing."
"Personal hatred and family affection are not incompatible; they often flourish and grow strong together."
"For ever and anon the soul becomes weary of the conventions that are not of it, and with a single stroke shatters the civilized lies with which it is unable to cope, and the strong arm reaches out and takes by force what it cannot win by cunning."
"One afternoon late in October of the year 1697, Euclide Auclair, the philosopher apothecary of Quebec, stood on the top of Cap Diamant gazing down the broad, empty river far beneath him."
"I had killed a big snake. I was now a big fellow."
"In Haverford on the Platte the townspeople still talk of Lucy Gayheart."
"In a few hours one could cover that incalculable distance; from the winter country and homely neighbours, to the city where the air trembled like a tuning-fork with unimaginable possibilities."
"Most publishers, like most writers, are ruined by their successes."