Debut Fiction Quotes & Sayings

Brian organised for the body to be flown back. — Jolene Tan

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

There used to be a rubbish heap under the great tree in Dhoby Ghaut with a sarabat stall parked next to it. It was a low, sprawling rubbish heap made up of the usual things - refuse from dustbins, paper, old tins and slippers and leaves from the tree above. Then one day, people forgot about it. They found a new dumping place and the old rubbish heap settled low on the ground. Time passed and its contents became warm and rich and fertile and people living in the area would take away potfuls of it to plant flowers in.

Somehow, a rose cutting, slim as a cheeping chicken's leg and almost brown, appeared on the rubbish heap one day. — Gregory Nalpon

The truth is, time marches on and you have two choices: You move forward, come what may, and you experience all the sour and sweet things that fly at you from around corners, or you sit still. Don't sit still. — Suzanne Palmieri

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

There is always pressure playing a real living person and even pressure developing a character from scratch. — Marisa Ramirez

Screenwriter Flacco nicely evokes the aftermath of San Francisco's 1906 earthquake in his fiction debut, a novel of suspense. — William Bernhardt

Imagining the worst has always been a great comfort to me. If there is turbulence there is an imminent crash. If she doesn't pick up the phone, she is fucking someone. If there is a lump it is a tumor. By thinking like this I protect myself from disappointment. And if anything other than the worst-case scenario unfolds, what a pleasant surprise! — Marc Maron

Nobody could've ever known I was positive because I didn't know. — Marc Wallice

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. — Janet Goodfriend

The only winner in the War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky. — Solomon Short

You've had a whole lot of experience, but everything is also radically new at each moment, and you have to bring a kind of childlike second-level innocence to bear upon all situations, if you are going to be of use and you are going to really learn from the situation or the people. — Jean Houston

I want to declare my Citizenship in the Kingdom of God and my allegiance to His Kingdom and His City! — David Berg

This idea that you're a successful tough guy if you evade taxes and deceive the state has got to change. — George Papandreou

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

Months after my wrists ripping, a talk therapist referred to the act as self-hatred. Until then nobody had said this to me. Did everyone presume that I already knew so? People say it all the time. It's safer to draw this conclusion. Throw in cowardice and you have an insulated public. I was not enraged at all. I was panic stricken. How could I hate myself for wanting to stop such physical sickness and terror? Mine was an act of caretaking, compassion, love. You cannot share this insight with therapists because they think such encourages recurrence. Have you ever stopped diarrhea with a prayer? If you have to go, you go. If you have to die, you die. — Brian Spellman

I have long admired the visceral storytelling and moral complexity of John Vaillant's brilliant non-fiction about humankind's tragically ambivalent relationship with the natural world. Now he brings his abundant literary gifts to a debut novel set in a very real borderland in which human beings are themselves treated like animals. The Jaguar's Children is a beautifully rendered lament for an imperiled culture and the brave lives that would preserve it. You should read it. — John Burnham Schwartz

I will take fate by the throat; it will never bend me completely to its will. — Ludwig Van Beethoven

My Heart and Other Black Holes is alive with intensity, gut-wrenching honesty, moments of humor, and
of course
heart. This is an extraordinary debut by a striking new voice in YA fiction that left me in awe and moved beyond measure. Not to be missed. — Nova Ren Suma

As a matter of fact, I deliberately look for the mundane, because I feel these stories are ignored. The most influential things that happen to virtually all of us are the things that happen on a daily basis. Not the traumas. — Harvey Pekar

Beneath Albright's office, the colliery sprawled across the hillside, red brick buildings scattered as though hurled from a great height, a hotchpotch of mismatched structures spattered on the valley floor. At the bottom stood the winding house, wheels motionless, above it, the engineering sheds and workshops, canteen and bath house. All lay empty. No buzz and hum of machinery. No voices raised in laughter or dispute. Gwyn found it unsettling: his lads had been out a month and a half and already the power had drained from the place. In the stillness, he caught the echo of footsteps. The crunch of boots on gravel. Generations of long-gone Pritchards clocking in and out. He was bound to Blackthorn by the coal that clogged his veins and by a bond of duty. The strike left him as diminished as his pit, day dragging after idle day. — Kit Habianic

Cheers for spring; for life; for a growing soul. — Sylvia Plath

It is as if a man were asked, 'What is the use of a hammer?' and answered, 'To make hammers'; and when asked, 'And of those hammers, what is the use?' answered, 'To make hammers again'. Just as such a man would be perpetually putting off the question of the ultimate use of carpentry, so Mr. Wells and all the rest of us are by these phrases successfully putting off the question of the ultimate value of the human life. — G.K. Chesterton

A great word becomes a great sentence with great meaning from great writers who have a great imagination and who enchant greatness — Mark Peter Evans

Always listen to your dog. — Margaret Mizushima

An astonishing debut. Brilliantly conceived, masterfully written, Stuart Neville's THE TWELVE is both a heart-pounding thriller and a stunning examination of responsibility and revenge. He is going to be a major new voice in suspense fiction. — Jeff Abbott

English. That was where I met him. — Andrew Koh

There are only two things you'll ever need to know about me, Farin - and you should know them well. I'm very smart, and I'm very rich. — Heather O'Brien

The '70s was a decade that was crammed with prominent women science fiction writers, and a lot of women made their debut in that decade or really came to prominence. — Ann Leckie

The gospel produced order, life, and purpose among the Thessalonians because it was a gospel of the Word and the Spirit. — Rob McCorkle

The sphere of the attractive virtue which is in the moon extends as far as the earth, and entices up the waters; but as the moon flies rapidly across the zenith, and the waters cannot follow so quickly, a flow of the ocean is occasioned in the torrid zone towards the westward. — Johannes Kepler

Red glowing eyes... No one could see her. No one could hear her. No one was coming to save her. Because Death had come sooner than expected. — Humairaa Anseline

I'd morphed, altered, nipped and tucked away bits of my personality for so long, I no longer recognized myself. I feared that one day, even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to identify myself. I'd be forever trapped in an image of another's making, and there would be no escape because I would have forgotten to want to escape.
Nida — Faiqa Mansab

The air between them began to settle into a silence. Awkward, yet softly exciting. Like an unexpected snow day. — Suzanne Palmieri

Though the heart may be cracked wide, pain can still seep in. — Rachelle Rea Cobb

(Imagine a world where all religious groups can simply freeze their beliefs and not have to interact with the culture.) — Marci A. Hamilton