Novel Quotes

Nowadays people talk about the things he did as though they made sense. As though even his most disastrous mistakes were only the result of bad luck or hubris.

~ Jeanette Winterson

I was happy but happy is an adult word. You don't have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not. Talking about it is the same as trying to catch the wind. Much easier to let it blow all over you. This is where I disagree with the philosophers. They talk about passionate things but there is no passion in them. Never talk happiness with a philosopher.

~ Jeanette Winterson

Merdeka!' the Malay man screamed.'Merdekaaaaaa!' the sea of people echoed.

~ Mohamed Latiff Mohamed

One of the things about writing that inspires--and impresses me, is the music words can make. And, like music, the spaces between the notes can mean as much as the notes themselves. -- The Jesus Horse

~ Melinda West Seifert

Presently a soprano voice of richness and depth floated from the open windows of the parlor, resonating over the darkening greenery. All at once it was as if the entire scene before them was awakened by that voice, infused with unexpected life: the western sky, streaked with bands of pale gold and purple; the two houses, standing gray and disconsolate against that sky; the clusters of trees casting deep black shadows here and there across the ground. The same voice that brought everything suddenly to life also drew them into another, much deeper world—a world that was normally hidden, a world that stretched out into eternity. Yusuke, who had at first looked on with a sense of distance as everyone else sat listening, their faces intent on the music, found himself being gradually drawn in as well, forgetting the moment and the place, lending his ear during that unworldly stretch of time as if entranced. No one spoke. The singing could not have lasted ten minutes, but when it ended he found the darkness all at once grew deeper.

~ Minae Mizumura

We work all our lives to be who we become. And, it's who we become that determines what becomes of us.

~ Melinda West Seifert

Life really is a story, and every story comes to an end. At the same time, it seems we all leave in the middle of our own stories. It's who we become that gives the story body, form and meaning.

~ Melinda West Seifert

She's still quite fit at ninety, fit enough to chew her food with her own teeth. Apparently she grew up in a house without a bar of soap, let alone tooth powder. Her family didn't have electricity until she started elementary school, and she'd never seen a train until the tracks of the Koumi line were laid in Saku. It's exactly as if she were born in the Edo period. These days, you only have to drive for five minutes to find a sparkling clean convenience store, with bright lights above shelves stocked with everything you could possibly need. Land that used to be fields of mulberry bushes is now crisscrossed by smooth, wide roads lined with video rental stores and fast food restaurants.I would say O-Hatsu has seen more changes in her lifetime than I have. After all, she lived for most of the century when this country was changing faster than it ever had before. Even so, I have a feeling that the inside of her head has remained much the same as when she was a girl. By the inside of her head I mean the way she sees the world around her—the language she uses to make sense of it. In my case, the very way I looked at the world and the words I used to understand it had altogether changed.

~ Minae Mizumura

That's not what I'm asking. I'm asking, what's your vice and what brand of trouble does it lead to?

~ Neal Stephenson

I mostly believe, deep in my bones, that life is very simply beyond description; regardless of what one makes of it, life always spills over the parameters of how anyone has chosen to define it.

~ Cyril Wong

In its basic form, nursing can be seen as a duty, but beyond the incessant operational activities that lay the foundation of our daily work, the profession is all about grace. Helping people is a noble calling. It is a privilege to serve my fellow human beings. Fifteen years has seen many ups and downs at the workplace, but I have enjoyed serving the many patients who come into my care, and have prayed for the souls of those who were on the brink of death.

~ Katherine Soh

During the Japanese invasion, bombs had fallen from the sky and people could run for cover. Now, they exploded in the middle of the road, or in the fields while people were playing soccer.

~ Mohamed Latiff Mohamed

It was past midnight. From the carpark of the apartment blocks, a human figure with an unsteady gait emerged.

~ Lim Thean Soo

English. That was where I met him.

~ Andrew Koh

Brian organised for the body to be flown back.

~ Jolene Tan

For her and Nurul merely to share a meal cooked in their own kitchen was a triumph, to wake up together each morning a luxury.

~ Jolene Tan

How you spend your time when you are not working or studying says everything about who you are and what is motivating your life.

~ Jennifer Elisabeth

You battled monsters. You sweat and cried your way to this one prolific moment where you finally realize that those dark days and sleepless nights were pre-requisites to your becoming.

~ Jennifer Elisabeth

I never want a girl to lose all hope that her life can’t completely turn around, even if she feels that she is at the edge, standing on one foot, and ready to say goodbye.

~ Jennifer Elisabeth

We live in a world where there is such a clear definition of what a girl should be that it takes almost no effort at all to completely hate ourselves.

~ Jennifer Elisabeth

Remember, nothing happens before it’s supposed to, so trust that, as you are striving for authenticity and personal excellence, the recognition of your life’s purpose is nearing closer.

~ Jennifer Elisabeth

I think it all basically breaks down to something like this: You have to look and feel great first. If you eat well, exercise and get enough sleep, you will have ample energy and the proper self-confidence to create and produce beyond your wildest dreams! Looking great and radiating positive energy, while presenting your highest quality work, is what will always make you the most valuable and only logical choice in whatever it is that you reach for.

~ Jennifer Elisabeth

Although many things may still need to happen before you identify what your exact work will be, I know that every single person whom you’re meeting and every experience that you’re having is necessary to you discovering your purpose. They are points on a map leading you to the moment where a match will finally be lit and you will be able to see through the darkness.

~ Jennifer Elisabeth

Recognize that you have been chosen to be alive, right now, at this exact moment in time and know that none of that is random. There is something about you, your past or your future that is required at this exact moment in history. We need to know who you are and what you have been through.

~ Jennifer Elisabeth

He thought, that all men, trickled away, changing constantly, until they finally dissolved, while the artist-created images remained unchangeably the same. He thought that the fear of death was perhaps the root of all art, perhaps also of all things of the mind. We fear death, we shudder at life’s instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something that lasts longer than we do. Perhaps the woman after whom the master shaped his beautiful Madonna is already wilted or dead, and soon he, too, will be dead; others will live in his house and eat at his table- but his work will still be standing hundreds of years from now, and longer. It will go on shimmering in the quiet cloister church, unchangingly beautiful, forever smiling with the same sad, flowering mouth.

~ Hermann Hesse

Finding yourself and creating a life that feels authentic and safe is the hardest, most important work that we will ever do and for girls, especially young girls, there is no one more equipped to do this work.

~ Jennifer Elisabeth

The only way that you can identify and then fulfill your life’s purpose is for you to love yourself, charge up your life and serve the world.

~ Jennifer Elisabeth

Sometimes you have to let go a little bit and travel the path of least resistance but this doesn’t mean that you quit when things get tough, as you are working towards a goal! It just means that you may only be able to see a rough draft of your final destination, right now, and that it’s safe to explore along the way.

~ Jennifer Elisabeth

As girls, we will do anything for the person whom we love. We will scale buildings in the rain or run through fire if it means saving our love’s life. There is absolutely nothing more life altering that the fire burning inside of our souls for the one we want most…

~ Jennifer Elisabeth

For the girl without words, there is laughter for what is light, gesture for want, and tears for all that is dark. There is not much more. Names are nothing but extravagance.

~ Lois-Ann Yamanaka

Time will solve all the problems Chinese school graduates face. In our bilingual society, there are no more Chinese school graduates, only English school graduates who can speak Mandarin. These English school graduates probably can also read and write Chinese, but they did not go to a Chinese school, and they act and think differently from us. Drawing a line between us, they would never say they graduated from a Chinese school, because former Chinese school graduates, that is, the vanishing group of people that includes us, are second-class citizens. They, on the other hand, belong to the first class, the Chinese elite, English school graduates who are fluent in Chinese.

~ Yeng Pway Ngon

For most of us free-thinking, wild hearts, our relationship with God or the Universe will go through peaks and valleys – transforming into new concepts and beliefs, completely disappearing, at times, only then to instantly explode back into existence by something even as small as a sunset!

~ Jennifer Elisabeth

Coincidence sometimes happens as in a fairy tale. Wong was in an emotional state of mind. Still smoking opium, he thought about Kwang’s long-dead father, who had arrived in Singapore from Amoy on the junk Nam Hong. The opium den now felt bare and lonely without all the old vibrations. It was also dark and damp and the small kerosene lamp was running low on fuel. Wong added more kerosene and mumbled to himself, “Tonight I am going to smoke my way to heaven!

~ Ming Cher

How flat all sounds are at the seaside, flat and yet emphatic, like the sound of gunshots heard at a distance.

~ John Banville

For a moment he came near to sharing their incredible belief—it would do no harm to mutter a prayer of thanks to the God of his childhood, the God of the Common and the castle, that no ill had yet come to Sarah's child. Then a sonic boom scattered the words of the hymn and shook the old glass of the west window and rattled the crusader's helmet which hung on a pillar, and he was reminded again of the grown-up world. He went quickly out and bought the Sunday papers. The Sunday Express had a headline on the front page—Child's Body Found in Wood.

~ Graham Greene

The novel remains for me one of the few forms...where we can describe, step by step, minute by minute, our not altogether unpleasant struggle to put ourselves into a viable and devout relationship to our beloved and mistaken world.

~ John Cheever

There are only two things in life,' Bergé said. 'Love and beauty.

~ Mark Zero

This was a crime of passion, but unlike most crimes of passion, it had been meticulously and diabolically well-planned.

~ Mark Zero

There are tales that rise like the early sun, breathe, and take on a life of their own. There are ones that flow quietly and effortlessly until time forsakes them, but there are others that fight until they find their way to the edge of reality, as if coming straight out of a dream.

~ Edwin Fontanez

A novel, though fiction, often speaks to the largest truths.

~ Mark Rubinstein