Literary Fiction Quotes

The author is impacted by a hidden insistence that takes the shape of different combinations each time adifferent text is produced but the underlying problem remains the same for him.

~ Anuradha Bhattacharyya

We lie on the blanket, our bare bodies basking in the sun like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Only our apples were bitten a long time ago, and we ate them too.

~ Henry Martin

A Quote from Monty's journal in GOD MUST BE WEEPING. I felt as anonymous as a grain of sand.

~ J.d. Winston

Time seemed to drag with dreamlike slowness, like a knife through cold honey, and the room took on a surreal golden sheen as if I was looking through that same jar of honey. Maybe at that moment, the sun shone just right though the grimy windows, but the woman, the shelves, the jars, everything in the room appeared in tones of gold and sepia, except for the painting behind the counter. From behind the shopkeeper's head, a fluorescent Mary and Jesus glared at me, their cartoon-like faces reproaching me for being there.

~ Sara Stark

Despite their macabre imaginations, they don't believe the things they say, all those things about magic and fantômes. But I do. I know he lingers. I've heard his voice, soft as a lover's whisper.

~ Sara Stark

I was an unwilling passenger leaving the Big Country. I would miss the mountains and the waterfalls,the treks on broad horses' backs to hidden villages in secret valleys.

~ Suzy Davies

We sat still, our breathing loud and rhythmic, its music melancholy, a traditional song of sorrow.

~ Margot Mccuaig

I don’t like coming over here at night, the girl said. The bayou is scary in the dark, all manner of things running wild out there.

~ Samuel Snoek-Brown

The burden is on the sane.

~ Warren Alexander

Some people say he engineered his own arrest to gain an insight into modern methods of policing for a thriller he had planned. But you know what happens to artistic rats in prison: they have their rectums stretched, and not by overindulgence in Michelin-star food; they have their columns examined, and not by internet humorists or a qualified medical practitioner. I’m sure Rat knew this, too. Although he likes to accumulate a wide general knowledge, he would rather have a narrow rectum. A colon comes in handy here, before examples: two dots on top of one other, like the cowboys who copulate on Brokeback Mountain, on a slope so far away you need binoculars to see them properly. In prison there are too many insights and examples. Rat would never risk it.

~ Graham Spaid

Olga was better, in the sun, where he could see every pore in her skin. Get closer. Feel her next to him. It was all he wanted in the world. It was the last thing in the world that he could do.

~ Graham Spaid

The sexual contact before this?“It was the first time.”The woman looked at Rat again, harder. The silence was more painful than the words. What she had just heard went beyond plain immorality. It was ridiculous.

~ Graham Spaid

The expected battle hadn’t taken place, yet something else had. Images of the entertainment which had just gone down were already coming back into Rat’s head. It had been wonderful to watch, unbelievably wonderful, the enactment of several plays at once on a single stage, and Rat was sorry it was over, but in a way it was even better to relive it now in the privacy of his mind. He hadn’t believed the boy-doctor and that stuff about the condom being used or warm, but he had gone along with it and the emotion which it powered. Everybody had. The emotion was the most important thing. He wondered how he could ever put such a chaotic, hilarious, sad thing down on paper, organise it into scenes or verses and fix his own pewiod at the end. He could never do it justice. He would never get that emotion back.

~ Graham Spaid

…he’d assumed their relationship would go on forever. It was going on now, but in another way, like the rearrangement of the stars, which were all still in the sky, just burning in unexpected places.

~ Graham Spaid

We just move on, don’t we, with traitors still amongst us? But there was one thought that wouldn’t go away. If I loved him, I would forgive him.

~ Graham Spaid

But this bus was a bit too full. The driver only appeared to control the glass and metal around him. In reality, he was at the nose of a travelling paroxysm.

~ Graham Spaid

I guess if you get too close, the twinkling stops; they don’t look like stars anymore.

~ Graham Spaid

You know what people are doing on the other side of the world, what’s happening on another planet, but not what’s going on inside the person next to you.

~ Graham Spaid

Were the stars against him? A woman's fingers are quicker in the sky and shine more brightly.

~ Graham Spaid

We put our flags in soil when we arrive, as if it now belongs to us and we know where we are.

~ Graham Spaid

The world is indeed a cold, hard stone.

~ Graham Spaid

A nose is ordinarily naked. A nose isn’t nipple, although there are similarities.

~ Graham Spaid

The emotion was the most important thing.

~ Graham Spaid

It took me most of my childhood to realize that traditions have infinite power over us.-MUKTA

~ Amita Trasi

I wonder if every girl yearns for her father’s love,almost like waiting to catch the moon hiding in the trees—beautiful, yet so eternally elusive.-MUKTA

~ Amita Trasi

Sifting through scattered memories is like sifting through sand. Some remain, some simply slipaway…– TARA

~ Amita Trasi

It feels as though it were just yesterday Grandfather exited my life like a bullet, leaving a bleeding hole behind.

~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Asif Ali maneuvers the gleaming Mercedes down the labyrinthine lanes of Old Kolkata with consummate skill, but his passengers do not notice how smoothly he avoids potholes, cows and beggars, how skilfully he sails through aging yellow lights to get the Bose family to their destination on time. This disappoints Asif only a little. In his six years of chauffeuring the rich and callous, he has realized that, to them, servants are invisible.

~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Elsa's mother no longer spoke to her of men and love, but of duty and fate and accepting one’s burden. As far as Elsa could tell, if love really was the inherited female domain, then women were saddled with the biggest burden of all. It was pressing down upon them, the way the sea pressed down upon the creatures of the deep.

~ Kathy-Diane Leveille

Last night I dreamt Moses and I were rowing underwater.We could breathe and talk to one another.We rowed past schools of fish and sea anemones and Moses named them for me.”—Jules Finn

~ J. Dylan Yates

Mom rubbed the back of my neck and we kept walking, away from the kids and the colors and the high-pitched, happy voices. Seeing them made me feel like I was a million miles from anything good. I just got really lonely. I'm not sure why. All those kids smiling and laughing and my mom so fucking clueless and me feeling kinda shitty and high at the same time. All of a sudden, I couldn't figure out what the point was. I couldn't remember what mattered.

~ Amy Sargent Swank

Over the years Breece had lectured that truth was liquid. That it evaporated in the heat of passion, froze in the cold of fear, and bent itself around virginous, unpurposeful fibs. It could churn and pull you under, drown you in itself, or let you ride upon it like a surf. But truth was always relfective. It showed blackheads and blemishes, fat rolls and sags, scabs and scars. Truth was fearful, angry and dangerous, and that was why so many people did their utmost to avoid it.

~ Brandon Shire

Holding the bread to her chest, she made her way home, thinking of those dreamy winter afternoons, when the light looked as it did now, the crystalline blue of the sky slipping into a faded purple, as faint as a bruise.

~ Alexis Landau

As I grow ever closer to the end of my time, I look back at this life and tell you that the only thing I would wish to give up is the regret I've carried in my heart for all these years. At long last I have come to realize the things I once counted as regrets were indeed blessings that I was too blind to see.

~ Bette Lee Crosby

It's no such thing! she said. It's friendship! And if you're a man who can't tell friendship from charity, then you're to be pitied!

~ Bette Lee Crosby

Church words are easy to say, but they're not so easy to live by.

~ Bette Lee Crosby

As sorry as I feel for myself, I feel even sorrier for her. I know she's afraid of staying and equally as frightened of going. Just as this land is a part of me, this house is a part of her. Selling off these things piece by piece is like cutting away chunks of her heart. I promised to make it better, but only God knows whether or not that's a promise I'll be able to keep.

~ Bette Lee Crosby

Cyrus is the meat and potatoes of my life, but Prudence was a cupcake I could enjoy just for the sheer sweetness of being with her.

~ Bette Lee Crosby

He searched his mind for something more to say, something to take away her pain, but he could find nothing. There were no words to ease such a pain. He knew because the ache in his heart was as great as hers.

~ Bette Lee Crosby

Here's to the future, he said and lifted the glass to his mouth. There was a lump of regret stuck in his throat as he spoke the words, but he washed it down with the whiskey.

~ Bette Lee Crosby