Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
One of the hardest things for me, now that I'm famous, is finding people who can read my stuff and give me an honest critique.
It was an odd thing to do, to stand in a street in the hope of seeing someone who hardly knew him, but he did not want to move.
I wanted to be some kind of captain of industry. Then I wanted to be in advertising, and then I wanted to be a newspaper reporter.
With the World War II era, there's so much written material to draw on. When you go back to the 14th century, you have to imagine more.
When I'm writing a woman character, I don't think, 'What would a woman do?' I just think, 'What would this character do in this situation?
Well, for people who want to write best sellers, the best advice I can give is to say that the novel has to engage the reader emotionally.
Trusting someone was like holding a little water in your cupped hands - it was so easy to spill the water, and you could never get it back.
I am very fond of Edith Wharton. She's quite high brow but also a great storyteller. My favorite is 'The House of Mirth.' I also like 'The Reef.
I am very fond of Edith Wharton. She's quite high brow but also a great storyteller. My favorite is 'The House of Mirth.' I also like 'The Reef.'
Why was it, Lloyd wondered, that the people who wanted to destroy everything good about their country were the quickest to wave the national flag?
For success, the author must make the reader care about the destiny of the principals, and sustain this anxiety, or suspense, for about 100,000 words.
I start with the history, and I ask myself, 'What are the great turning points? What are the big dramatic scenes that are essential to telling the story?'
Having faith in God did not mean sitting back and doing nothing. It meant believing you would find success if you did your best honestly and energetically.
We all now tell stories by cutting from one dramatic scene to the next, whereas Victorian novelists felt free to write long passages of undramatic summary.
James Bond is quite serious about his drinks and clothing and cigarettes and food and all that sort of thing. There is nothing wry or amused about James Bond.
I like to create imaginary characters and events around a real historical situation. I want readers to feel: OK, this probably didn't happen, but it might have.
When you're thinking, please remember this: excessive pride is a familiar sin, but a man may just as easily frustrate the will of God through excessive humility.
I'm a great planner, so before I ever write chapter 1, I work out what happens in every chapter and who the characters are. I usually spend a year on the outline.
She loved him because he had brought her back to life. She had been like a caterpillar in a cocoon, and he had drawn her out and shown her that she was a butterfly.
I use a professional researcher in New York who does all the legwork, all that stuff which would take me days and weeks of calling, waiting for people to call back.
Knotty theological questions are the least worrying of problems to me. Why? Because they will be resolved in the hereafter, and meanwhile they can be safely shelved.
The research is the easiest. The outline is the most fun. The first draft is the hardest, because every word of the outline has to be fleshed out. The rewrite is very satisfying.
I don't think there's any great mystery to writing female characters, so long as you talk to them. If you lived in a monastery and never met any women, maybe it would be difficult.
I wake up with the story in my head, so I really like to be at my desk about five minutes after I wake up. So I don't get dressed. I put on a bathrobe, I make tea and sit at my desk.
Listen, I wrote 10 unsuccessful books before I broke through, so I'm looking all the time to keep my books fascinating. I want to write what people want to read, not push any message.
To someone standing in the nave, looking down the length of the church toward the east, the round window would seem like a huge sun exploding into innumerable shards of gorgeous color.
In my books, women often solve the problem. Even if the woman is not the hero, she's a strong character. She does change the plot. She'll often rescue the male character from some situation.
President Wilson says a leader must treat public opinion the way a sailor deals with the wind, using it to blow the ship in one direction or another, but never trying to go directly against it.
I have quite a few different Bibles. Having rejected my parents' religion, I still think the King James Bible is the most important work of literature in English. None of us can help being influenced by it.
There was a very serious communist strain among American intellectuals before the war. America was a more tolerant place in those days, and Communists were not treated as pariahs. That ended with the McCarthy era.
Nevertheless, the book gave Jack a feeling he had never had before, that the past was like a story, in which one thing led to another, and the world was not a boundless mystery, but a finite thing that could be comprehended.
World War II is the greatest drama in human history, the biggest war ever and a true battle of good and evil. I imagine writers will continue to get stories from it, and readers will continue to love them, for many more years.
You see, all that I ever held dear has been taken from me," she said in a matter-of-fact tone. "And when you've lost everything-" Her facade began to crumble, and her voice broke, but she made herself carry on. "When you've lost everything, you've got nothing to lose.
You never know," Jack said speculatively. "There may come a time when savages like William Hamleigh aren't in power; when the laws protect the ordinary people instead of enslaving them; when the king makes peace instead of war. Think of that - a time when towns in England don't need walls!
People are much more complicated in real life, but my characters are as subtle and nuanced as I can make them. But if you say my characters are too black and white, you've missed the point. Villains are meant to be black-hearted in popular novels. If you say I have a grey-hearted villain, then I've failed.
I went and looked at one of these great cathedrals one day, and I was blown away by it. From there I became interested in how cathedrals were built, and from there I became interested in the society that built the medieval cathedral. It occurred to me at some point that the story of the building of a cathedral could be a great popular novel.
It was an odd relationship, but then she was an extraordinary woman: a prioress who doubted much of what the church taught; an acclaimed healer who rejected medicine as practised by physicians; and a nun who made enthusiastic love to her man whenever she could get away with it. If I wanted a normal relationship, Merthin told himself, I should have picked a normal girl.
We’re all good when it suits us, he used to say: that doesn’t count. It’s when you want so badly to do something wrong—when you’re about to make a fortune from a dishonest deal, or kiss the lovely lips of your neighbor’s wife, or tell a lie to get yourself out of terrible trouble—that’s when you need the rules. Your integrity is like a sword, he would say: you shouldn’t wave it until you’re about to put it to the test.
Ethel said: "Lloyd, there's someone here you may remember-" Daisy could not restrain herself. She ran to Lloyd and threw herself into his arms. She hugged him. She looked into his green eyes, then kissed his brown cheeks and his broken nose and then his mouth. "I love you, Lloyd," she sad madly. "I love you, I love you, I love you." "I love you, too, Daisy," he said. Behind her, Daisy heard Ethel's wry voice. "You do remember, I see.
She looked at his young face, so full of concern and tenderness; and she remembered why she had run away from everyone else and sought solitude here. She yearned to kiss him, and she saw the answering longing in his eyes. Every fiber of her body told her to throw herself into his arms, but she knew what she had to do. She wanted to say, I love you like a thunderstorm, like a lion, like a helpless rage; but instead she said: "I think I'm going to marry Alfred.
I’ve worked with volunteers before,” he began. “It’s important not to… not to treat them like servants. We may feel that they are laboring to obtain a heavenly reward, and should therefore work harder than they would for money; but they don’t necessarily take that attitude. They feel they’re working for nothing, and doing a great kindness to us thereby; and if we seem ungrateful they will work slowly and make mistakes. It will be best to rule them with a light touch.