Novel Quotes - Page 10

The best part of the fiction in many novels is the notice that the characters are imaginary.

They all dreamt of each other that night, as was natural, considering how thin the partitions were between them, and how strangely they had been lifted off the earth to sit next each other in mid-ocean, and see every detail of each others' faces, and hear whatever they chanced to say.

At my age, every day that I overcome simple inertia is a victory.

Once I was King of the Titans. Now I need a MedicAlert bracelet and a subscription to the Safe Return program. Can you put out a Silver Alert on a god? I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.

Merdeka!' the Malay man screamed.

'Merdekaaaaaa!' the sea of people echoed.

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.

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.

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.

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

English. That was where I met him.

Brian organised for the body to be flown back.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

That's sounds right. Another $5,000 went to dress up the Little League park where he had played so many games. Seems like he paid off the MORTAGE on his parents' home, which wasn't that much.

Books are an extension of our imagination