Literary and political work helps people to ged rid of stereotypes

For a writer to sit before a blank page, as a painter before a white canvass or general before a bloodless field; before the first scribble of creation, is a moment like no other. The...

This was a lucky recollection — it saved her from something like regret.

All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.

I believe a family just isn’t complete without skeletons. My dearest momma clean bit off my daddy’s nose right around the time they divorced.

I think he is unassailable from a literary point of view, … On the other hand, there may be some people who think he’s too established.

That Yank glean is long gone anyway; money, sex, power, it’s gone global – no one has a monopoly on it anymore. The towering skyscrapers of New York had fallen long before the second plane;...

Darkness crept through. Shadows pried at doors, teased dull edges of recollections that never quite took hold. Memories that would have shriveled under the blinding sun of daylight. And reason.

They never opened the door which leads to the soul.

A girl without braidsis like a city without bridges.

Short story collections are the literary equivalent of canapés, tapas and mezze in the world of gastronomy: Delightful assortments of tasty morsels to whet the reader’s appetite.

How the story will turn out I never know; but that it will, I am confident.

When a friend of Abigail and John Adams was killed at Bunker Hill, Abigail’s response was to write a letter to her husband and include these words, “My bursting heart must find vent at my...

I’ve always felt that good writing does not have to be literary.

And in a land accustomed to so much anguish, Chase tried to be careful with words. His soccer moms began assigningnicknames during the first day of official practice: Difom, Kakas, Kochma, and Maldyok, which roughly...

Reality is shaped by the forces that destroy it.

Let the enemy fall by their swords. Words not worth reading die their own death. But our Words will be Told!

The Special Operations Network was instigated to handle policing duties considered either too unusual or too specialized to be tackled by the regular force. There were thirty departments in all, starting at the more mundane...

It’s a truth universally acknowledged…

Ô, wine!, the truth-serum so potent that all those who wish to live happy lives should abstain from drinking it entirely!… except of course when they are alone.

…it occurred to me that I could use the energy I had been putting into endurance to change my life. Yet the concept of brunt, of accepting and enduring, still seems to me to have...

When daily you write intensively, one day of laziness subjects you to a suffering of unfamiliar compunction. The words can freeze and the state of privation worsens with idleness. Thus, a day off for a...

Because you live to love and love to live/ And because of what your heardrum will give/ Now we might love to live and live to love.

I can’t bear literary snobbery.

Do you think you could kill a person and not get all crazy about it?

Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.

Just like literature, wine takes time to learn. Before having access to the emotion of a stunning poem or to the vigor of a captivating novel, we all had to go through a long initiation....

Her eyes were a rich dark brown that were so deep, they reminded me of my sleepless nights, awake, staring into complete darkness. I felt compelled to look deeper, searching for something inside her, but...

The Bishop blessed him and helped him to his feet.”May God have mercy on you,” he said. And erased him from his heart.

. . . a statement that is repugnant to one’s beliefs can be as true as one that is pleasurable.

The centuries are sprinkled with rare magicwith divine creatureswho help us get past the common and extraordinary ills that beset us

The secret is if you write enough words, sooner or later you have a book.

I don’t mean that literary fiction is better than genre fiction, On the contrary; novels can perform two functions and most perform only one.

Copywriters, journalists, mainstream authors, ghostwriters, bloggers and advertising creatives have as much right to think of themselves as good writers as academics, poets, or literary novelists.

Noriega wound up like a baseball pitcher on top of the bed and hurled the small gun, but was low and outside for a ball. His tight-fitting house dress was bunched up high on his...

I’m very anxious not to fall into archaism or “literary” diction. I want my vocabulary to have a very large range, but the words must be alive.

I am a bomb but I mean you no harm. That I still am here to tell this, is a miracle: I was deployed on May 15, 1957, but I didn’t go off because a...

The Book of Life, I’m still writing it—both literally and literarily. So far I’ve written the Table of Contents. Right now it’s more of a coffee table.

It is not that the girl is unfit for everything, it is that she is not of this world.

When I put together a graphic novel, I don’t think about literary prose. I think about storytelling.

I’m a minicamp body in 102-degree heat getting screamed at by the only other man my size: a middle-aged receivers coach they call Bow Wow.

My ambition is the immediate page of the book I am currently working on. The next word to follow the last. A fresh new idea.

Don’t stop aspiring. Just learn to duck. . .

As it stands there is a very strong argument that as the book trade becomes increasingly corporate it’s our literary heritage that is at risk – a vital part of our culture.

Diable!” They were hurling these words at Moreau like stones.

I wish the military were the militerary. Less fighting and more reading.

I always say, ‘Books beat boredom,’ said Amanda wisely.

I’m a book lover. I’ve probably already fucked a whole library.

Inhale when I inhale. Exhale when I exhale. Breathe with me,for two beating hearts breathing one breath together become one.

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...