Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It's amazing that the heart makes no noise when it cracks.
I take real people and put them in extraordinary situations.
All the stories I'll ever need are right here on Main Street.
It doesn't matter how big the body, it's what you do with it.
I have lived a thousand lives lost within the pages of a book.
I'm weary of the battle. But a tired fighter can still be a fighter.
Why did the wise guys always accuse other people of being wise guys?
A writer must take risks, defy the odds, be a bit obsessed and a little mad.
I can't remember a time when I wasn't trying to get something down on paper.
Cities fell. Earth opened. Planets tilted. Stars plummeted. And the awful silence.
They don't actually want you to do your own thing, not unless it's their thing too.
I simply write with an intelligent reader in mind. I don't think about how old they are.
I had my bully, and it was excruciating. Not only the bully, but the intimidation I felt.
You seldom get a censorship attempt from a 14-year-old boy. It's the adults who get upset.
Don't miss the bus, boy. You're missing a lot of things in the world, better not miss that bus.
I have always had a sense that we are all pretty much alone in life, particularly in adolescence.
I've had aunts and uncles who not only haven't read my books but could hardly believe that I was a writer.
Everybody sins, Francis. The terrible thing is that we love our sins. We love the thing that makes us evil.
...pain reaches a certain point and does not get worse but remains in all its intensity and you can survive it.
And he did see--that life was rotten, that there were no heroes, really, and that you couldn't trust anybody, not even yourself.
You bring up your children to be self-reliant and independent and they double-cross you and become self-reliant and independent.
I'm always telling myself as I write that I'm not really writing a novel; I'm just going to fool around with a character or an idea.
I don't think I began to be a professional writer until I learned my weaknesses and what I couldn't do. This forced me to compensate.
That's what Archie did - built a house nobody could anticipate a need for, except himself, a house that was invisible to everyone else.
I write very tightly, and my big fear is boring people. I want them to read quickly, stopped in their tracks. I resist indulging myself.
You could reason with someone who was halfway educated and appeal to his intelligence, but I felt helpless in the face of utter stupidity.
I'm not a reader of young adult fiction for the simple reason that these novelists are writing for adolescents, so they are not writing for me.
It came to me that hell would not be fire and smoke after all but arctic, everything white and frigid. Hell would be not anger but indifference.
Affection is one of the most neglected words in the English language, that people throw the word love around like confetti when they mean affection.
He was swept with a sadness, a sadness deep and penetrating, leaving him desolate like someone washed up on a beach, a lone survivor in a world full of strangers.
It would be nice to avoid the world, to leave it and all its threats and unhappiness. Not to die or anything like that, but to find a place of solitude and solace.
I find that most books that I don't like are those in which the authors have indulged themselves. I can almost sense when they're writing something for themselves.
A terrific sadness swept over Jerry. As if somebody had died. The way he felt standing in the cemetry that day they buried his mother. And nothing you could do about it.
I sometimes get tired because I can seldom read a book for pleasure. I'm like the play reviewer who happens to go to a play on an off day and can't help but view it critically.
Family life was wonderful. The streets were bleak. The playgrounds were bleak. But home was always warm. My mother and father had a great relationship. I always felt 'safe' there.
The possibility that hope comes out of hopelessness and that the opposite of things carry the seeds of birth - love out of hate, good out of evil. Didn't flowers grow out of dirt?
When people say they write for themselves, that's probably what they do. I will admit that I don't write for myself; I write to be read. I've got the reader in my mind all the time.
We often think that tragedies happen because of great earthquakes in people's lives. I think they sometimes occur because of small things that become obsessive to a particular person.
He hated to think of his own life stretching ahead of him that way, a long succession of days and nights that were fine - not good, not bad, not great, not lousy, not exciting, not anything.
The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. You can always do it better, find the exact word, the apt phrase, the leaping simile.
A new sickness invaded Jerry, the sickness of knowing what he had become, another animal, another beast, another violent person in a violent world, inflicting damage, not disturbing the universe but damaging it.
There are no taboos. Every topic is open, however shocking. It is the way that the topics are handled that's important, and that applies whether it is a 15-year-old who is reading your book or someone who is 55.
My dream was to be known as a writer and to be able to produce at least one book that would be read by people. That dream came true with the publication of my first novel - and all the rest has been a sweet bonus.
There are moments that stop the heart, that catch the breath, that halt the beat of blood in your veins, and you are suspended in time, held between life and death, and you wait for something to bring you back again.
People always ask me about the role models that I'm providing for kids, and I say I can't be concerned with that. I'm not worrying about corrupting youth. I'm worrying about writing realistically and truthfully to affect the reader.
A novel must work as a story because no one's going to get to the other themes if you don't entertain the reader. But I like to have another layer of meaning, although you can read the book on one level and not bother with that other layer.
Kids tell me all the time, "I don't know how you do it, but that's us in the book." That's the kind of response you want, and I can't sacrifice it for the sake of somebody worried about censorship. You have to find a way to be truthful and honest.
Do I dare disturb the universe? Yes, I do, I do. I think. Jerry suddenly understood the poster--the solitary man on the beach standing upright and alone and unafraid, poised at the moment of making himself heard and known in the world, the universe.
You hope that people read your book and say "Yes, this is the way it is or could be." But then you have no way of knowing until the reader reads the book. Actually, the critical response doesn't worry me. I've had very few reviews that have upset me.
As much as there is joy in writing, there's always the little bit of terror to keep you on edge, on your toes. It is a strange way to occupy yourself - to enjoy your life on a daily basis. There is no guarantee that something great is going to come next.