…and I wondered, not for the first time, if some of life’s tragedy arose when people put themselves in situations they were not by nature suited for.

If you focus your eyes towards the horizon, everything and everyone walking in front of you becomes a blurry mass. That’s what everyone else became. All of their dark wool suits began to mesh into...

Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved. Drugs, movies where stuff blows up, loud parties — all these chase away loneliness by making me forget my name’s...

If we truly detach from our childhood and abandon our inherent romanticism, then we shred any bit of humanity left in us.

Once out of the mailroom, I began to learn more about fear. As soonas fear begins to ascend, anatomically, from the pit of the stomach to thethroat and brain, from fear of violence to the...

No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.

In 1936, I first wrote science fiction. It was a long-winded attempt at writing an endless novel…which died. I remember one sentence, “Whole forests stood sere and brown in midsummer”.

How does evil arise? Where does it come from? We think of malevolent men-— murderers, rapists, tyrants—and somehow believe they are different creatures from us. They are not. All evil men were once innocent babes,...

A romance book is designed to tell you something about love–its ability to endure, forgive, go the extra mile, care about someone, put someone else first.

I could have drowned…and my brother didn’t even care.

My name’s Sean, Jem. I’m Sean.

Your heart is like a great river after a long spell of rain, spilling over its banks. All signposts that once stood on the ground are gone, inundated and carried away by that rush of...

Going for it and changing what you could change-that’s what success was all about.

I liked reading biographies of writers, even if (as was the case with Monsieur Rabelais)I’d never read any of their actual writing. I flipped to the back and found the highlighted quote (“NEVER USE A...

It was a time before Facebook and Instagram and texting. I imagine it must be easier now, for college students. Home must not feel so far away anymore. But how do you cut the apron...

Six nervous wives at the sink, each quiet as a queen on a chessboard.

I was so enthused with literature — not stuck on literature, but in love with letters — that I was easily inclined to bring all the conversations round to works I had read or fictitious...

Kadang aku merasa jatuh cinta kepadanya seperti bernapas—terlalu mudah. Sangat mudah sampai-sampai aku tidak menyadarinya.

A time will come in your life, William, where your faith will be tested… and you must stay faithful to the word and vision that the All-Father has given to you.

I would never attempt to dissuade anyone from reading a book. But please, if you’re reading something that’s killing you, put it down and read something else, just as you would reach for the remote...

A new age dawns, Uttara. The Wheel of Time has turned. Not too long from now – hopefully in our lifetime – Aryavarta will be a janapada, a realm ruled by its people, the largest...

(From the Author Note at the beginning of the book.) Dorothy L. Sayers used to say that mystery stories were the only moral fiction of the modern world–because in a mystery, you were guaranteed to...

Underwater, bubbles erupted before my eyes as a swift hand snatched my arm and pulled me to the surface. I gasped for air, coughing and gagging at the amount of water I sucked into my...

To see someone you love in so much pain—especially emotional pain that can’t be remedied—was the worst form of torture.

Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.

I’m angry with myself.

Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.

In life your rewards come from the gifts you give to others.

Misconceptions about Young Adult fiction aren’t new to fans of the genre. From being dismissed as mindless fluff for ‘Twilight’-obsessed tweens, to constant warnings that the genre is dying, kerfuffles between the media and readers...

The course of the Rhine below Mainz becomes much more picturesque. The river descends rapidly and winds between hills, not high, but steep, and of beautiful forms. We saw many ruined castles standing on the...

The most temptation I’d experienced had been with Tomas, the Senate’s spy who had been feeding off me without permission, and Mircea, who was probably plotting some nefarious scheme. I have no taste in men.

He has the memory of a convict, the balls of a fireman, and the eyesight of a housebreaker. When there is crime to fight, Landsman tears around Sitka like a man with his pant leg...

And your nose is remarkably obvious. As is the rest of your face, young man. As are you. For the sake of all that is holy, empty your mind. Now. You are an empty alleyway....

When you’re used to being in dangerous situations, you develop a sixth sense about your surroundings, about where possible enemies might be lurking, how many steps it will take to reach the next corner on...

Bear with me G-Harrison because this is going to be a long speech. I’ve always had this feeling that the world is not enough and I won’t be happy in life unless I hold hands...

They watch on, evil, incredibly stupid, enjoying my destruction.’Poor Grendel’s had an accident,’ I whisper. ‘So may you all.

In fiction: we find the predictable boring. In real life: we find the unpredictable terrifying.

Tra quei libri polverosi e quei leggii capimmo quanto eravamo fatti l’uno per l’altra. Erano sufficienti uno sguardo, un sorriso, una carezza per capirsi.

Infatuation burns itself out,’ she says. ‘Friendship mixed with old chemistry–that can last a lifetime.

It’s just like an alcoholic to think he’s doing the Zombie Apocalypse wrong.

Editing fiction is like using your fingers to untangle the hair of someone you love.

I heart my job. I get to make things up for a living.

I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in Sir Sidney Lee’s life of the poet. She died young–alas, she never wrote a...

as soon as we renounce fiction and illusion, we lose reality itself; the moment we subtract fictions from reality, reality itself loses its discursive-logical consistency.

Fiction is the best the self-help book.

It’s odd to imagine, of course: you pass a car on a lonely rural highway; you sit beside a man in a diner and share views with him; you wait behind a customer checking into...

It’s not the word made flesh we want in writing, in poetry and fiction, but the flesh made word

Although when there were too many people around- which there certainly were today- it was hard even to remember to say thank you: all those people were like drowning.

The proposition that primitive dream imagery might reproduce, albeit imperfectly, the experience of one’s ancestors, including their terrors, was rather too existentially charged for post-modern sensitivities, for which the meaningless hypothesis of memory de-junking was...

No one is on this road, she thought. No one but us. Everyone knows this isn’t the place to be at three o’clock on a summer afternoon. Everyone but us.