Inspirational Novel Quotes & Sayings

There are many of us who live alongside others, less fortunate, watching them go through everyday suffering for one reason or another, and we're not moving even our little finger to help them. It's in human nature, unfortunately: for the most part, the only people we genuinely care about are ourselves. However, once in a while we encounter different species, different kind of human beings among us: full of compassion, willing and wanting to help, and doing so with joy and happiness. Those are a rarity. But you know what, my dear? Being one of them is not a special calling- it's a choice. So what will you choose, huh? — Yoleen Valai

The Sun Dagger appeared on the rock face directly above the Shaman's shadowed head. It dazzled within the shade as the sunlight slipped through a gap in the overhead slabs. The dagger cut slowly down the rock, slicing through the very center of the etched spiral.
"The middle of time," Chaco whispered to himself. — P.J. Parker

I don't so much mind looking back on having lost the election, or having been denied a role in the play, or having had my novel repeatedly rejected, or having been turned down for a date, or recalling laughter at my expense when I attempted some silly challenge. Those things simply prove that I lived life. What I do mind, however, is looking back on the lost opportunities where imagined concerns kept me from even trying - lose or win. I've learned that there is no regret in a brave attempt, only in cowering to fear. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Life isn't fair," comes the voice of Nana. She has told me that a thousand times. "What matters is how you handle it." I'm going to handle it by winning. — Carolyn Lee Adams

You never finish writing a novel, you eventually abandon it. — Tom Winton

When life gives you lemons, turn them into a bestselling novel! — Breathless

I've never met anyone as kind as you are, except me Mum, o' course." --Benjamin Trimmel to Lady Alexandra. — Lisa M. Prysock

And if I'm guilty of having gratuitous sex, then I'm also guilty of having gratuitous violence, and gratuitous feasting, and gratuitous description of clothes, and gratuitous heraldry, because very little of this is necessary to advance the plot. But my philosophy is that plot advancement is not what the experience of reading fiction is about. If all we care about is advancing the plot, why read novels? We can just read Cliffs Notes.
A novel for me is an immersive experience where I feel as if I have lived it and that I've tasted the food and experienced the sex and experienced the terror of battle. So I want all of the detail, all of the sensory things - whether it's a good experience, or a bad experience, I want to put the reader through it. To that mind, detail is necessary, showing not telling is necessary, and nothing is gratuitous. — George R R Martin

The other Clans will soon arrive. The greatest times of our family are before us. And so are the darkest. — P.J. Parker

West Point - The Key to the Continent and Independence. — P.J. Parker

We live in a complicated society, Bromley - one that is changing and which does indeed need to change. But do you not think any change must begin within our own family gathering? — P.J. Parker

If we're open to it, God can use even the smallest thing to change our lives ... to change us. It might be a laughing child, car brakes that need fixing, a sale on pot roast, a cloudless sky, a trip to the woods to cut down a Christmas tree, a school teacher, a Dunhill Billiard pipe ... or even a pair of shoes.
Some people will never believe. They may feel that such things are too trivial, too simple, or too insignificant to forever change a life. But I believe.
And I always will. — Donna VanLiere

Embrace the fear, use it, but don't become a victim of it. — Brandy Nacole

Do you not recognize me? — P.J. Parker

The God Factor Saga is a complex blockbuster in genre of This Present Darkness meets Anne of Green Gables. This saga is a romantic, suspenseful, apocalyptic, and inspirational novel tucked into the stories of children who grow up to be men and women with Divine purpose. — J. Nell Brown

Daisy doesn't even go to his funeral, Nick and Jordan part ways, and Daisy ends up sticking with racist Tom ... you can tell Fitzgerald never took the time to look up at clouds during sunset, because there's no silver lining at the end of that book, let me tell you.
I do see why Nikki likes the novel, as it's written so well. But her liking it makes me worry now that Nikki really doesn't believe in silver linings, because she says The Great Gatsby is the greatest novel ever written by an American, and yet it ends so sadly. One thing's for sure, Nikki is going to be very proud of me when I tell her I finally read her favorite book. -Silver Linings Playbook, p. 9 — Matthew Quick

E.L. Doctorow said once said that 'Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard. — Anne Lamott

The early morning sunshine shot up the ice-covered valley. It glinted off the backs of slumbering mastodon, reflected between the antlers of caribou. — P.J. Parker

I never tried to ingratiate myself with great writers. When a great writer has nothing to say, he does something else, like chopping firewood. A great writer doesn't try to find something to write about, he only writes when he has to. I was no great writer. I've always had the need to unload my thoughts, and so had to live with a kind of mental incontinence, but I've never felt forced to write a novel. Nor, for that matter, have I ever chopped firewood. — Jostein Gaarder

One large cat bounded up the side of the outcrop to stand in full view on an overhanging boulder. She stared down at them, inside their protective enclosure, tilting her head from side to side. Her scarred yellow-brown coat was immaculately groomed, but the long tufting hair of her snout was matted with the bright red smear of uncongealed blood from a recent kill. Her upper lip curved over the top of foot-long saber teeth. — P.J. Parker

Do you understand the meaning of the soil beneath your feet? — P.J. Parker

Sweetie, you don't need to drive me to the brink of insanity ... I'm close enough to walk! — Tanya Masse

The central character is an incomplete package of yearning that takes the length of the novel to complete. Completion, though, is not to be confused with perfection. — Patricia Hickman

Facing the sagging middle when writing a novel, while inevitable, may be
overcome by pre-planning. I divide my collection of proposed scenes into three acts, each scene inciting tension that builds toward the final crisis in Act Three. If by Act Two the emotional river isn't spilling over the banks, I reassess the plot so that once the writing is flowing I don't slide into a dry creek. The central character should be struggling to navigate life well into the end of Act One, even if her fiercest antagonist is only from within. — Patricia Hickman

Every page of a great novel should be crafted like a beautiful melody, to linger on long after the music stops playing. — Johnny Flora

No matter how much restitution she paid with every word and deed, her blood-stained hands could never really be clean, even if no one else knew they were dirty. — Stacy Hawkins Adams

These motivational tapes have really inspired me! I'm going to make a million dollars, buy my own company and retire early. Then, I'm going to write a novel and a symphony and give all the profits to charity. Then next month, I'll figure out how to do it. — Randy Glasbergen

[A young adult novel] ends not with happily ever after, but at a new beginning, with the sense of a lot of life yet to be lived. — Richard Peck

We all fight for money, some for power, but most of all for love. But me, I fight to become a champion. — Jonathan Anthony Burkett

Irma, she said. But I had started to walk away. I heard her say some more things but by then I had yanked my skirt up and was running down the road away from her and begging the wind to obliterate her voice. She wanted to live with me. She missed me. She wanted me to come back home. She wanted to run away. She was yelling all this stuff and I wanted so badly for her to shut up. She was quiet for a second and I stopped running and turned around once to look at her. She was a thimble-sized girl on the road, a speck of a living thing. Her white-blond hair flew around her head like a small fire and it was all I could see because everything else about her blended in with the countryside.
He offered you a what? she yelled.
An espresso! I yelled back. It was like yelling at a shorting wire or a burning bush.
What is it? she said.
Coffee! I yelled.
Irma, can I come and live
I turned around again and began to run. — Miriam Toews

I am the happiest person on this world, who has never seen ups and downs in life. I got whatever I wished for ... And I woke up! — Rahul Rampal

When I write I feel like I can breathe. It's like yoga for the brain. — Elise Stokes

Henry had written a novel because there was a hole in him that needed filling, a question that needed answering, a patch of canvas that needed painting - that blend of anxiety, curiosity and joy that is at the origin of art - and he had filled the hole, answered the question, splashed colour on the canvas, all done for himself, because he had to. Then complete strangers told him that his book had filled a hole in them, had answered a question, had brought colour to their lives. The comfort of strangers, be it a smile, a pat on the shoulder or a word of praise, is truly a comfort. — Yann Martel

Life is like authoring a novel, our choices write the chapters that decide our path, destiny, and if you're blessed, a happy ending. — Brandie Knight

Love is not a forest fire that burns intensely,
hotly and out of control for a brief moment until,
its expendable fuel spent,
it sputters,
seeking in vain for something else to consume,
to sustain itself before, finally,
it dies:
cold, black ash the only evidence of its passing.
Love is, instead, a campfire:
it provides ample heat and comfort
to the twosome who sit before it,
and although its flames may at times wane,
a well-tended campfire's embers can be nurtured and fanned
until the flames once again dance brightly and cheerfully,
providing comfort to the couple
who cherish the gentle warmth it ministers. — J. Conrad Guest

Stop looking for your better half! You need to be whole to attract your better whole, if you expect to have a flourishing relationship. — Valerie J. Lewis Coleman

Shed the pains of yesterday and seize the plans of tomorrow."
-Catherine N. Crumber — Catherine Crumber

Our lives are a novel being written. We are its author. Every action we encounter and every person we meet has a role and a place in our ultimate story. It is in our control to decide the level of how, who and what impacts us and how large a role we decide to assign each. — Mark W. Boyer

Describing colors to a blind is what writing is all about. — Viraj J. Mahajan

Time flows like memories on the shores of the past. — Michael Joseph Murano

When it's too good, you do it over again. Too good is too easy. If it's too easy you have to worry. If you're not lying awake at night worrying about it, the reader isn't going to, either. I always know that when I get a good night's sleep, the next day I'm not going to get any work done. Writing a novel is like working on foreign policy. There are problems to be solved. It's not all inspirational. — James M. Cain

This isn't Sex and the City, and life isn't a Nicholas Sparks novel. The best kind of love is one that is calming on the spirit, easy on the heart, fulfilling and completing. — Hope Alcocer

My Eyes Are Open But I'm Hardly Looking In The Front ... Everything's Passing Me, Some Are Staring But My Eyes Are Blank, I'm Seeing But Not Seeing As My Mind Is Not Sending The Message To My Brains To Produce Images ... I'm Walking Alone Yet Full of People Around Me ... I'm Walking Forward ... There's No Feeling As I'm Numb ... Only Thing I Know, I Have To Finish My Ride Before My Time Expires ... So I'm Walking With Blank Emotion In My Eyes ...
(* Excerpt From My Novel "Eastern Promise") — Muhammad Imran Hasan

There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book. ( ... )
A good novel editor is invisible. — Terri Windling

The Sleepin' Fox Catches No Poultry. — P.J. Parker

There were no stars, only the darkness and an arctic chill that had intensified since the first thin, blood-red stripes of sunrise shimmered on the ocean's horizon. — P.J. Parker

I look at you, Mrs. Emily. I see your eyes smile before your lips. Your hair has a curl that droops onto your forehead when the weather is humid . . .

I look at you too, Sabine. I see you. — Phyllis H. Moore

A girl's reaction to an offer for her first kiss should not be vomit. — April Erwin

I know you would be watching over me all through this journey called life ... whenever I look next to me, I feel like you are
here ... and a part of you is within me in the form of this child ... Love is like the wind ... you may not see it ... especially in the absence of the other ... but you always feel it around ... — Santonu Kumar Dhar

True writers know that writing is not something they feel required to do,
or to make a living they must do, it is quite frankly like breathing. Some
can breathe often and fluently, some short breaths, some a long exhale
and for many of us it is the patient steady breathing surrounding life. — Milissa R. Bailey

Rainbow Cloud strode forward like a hunting cat with the same strength of height and broad shoulders, the same rolling gait as First Light's father. They were indeed the same man, split in two at birth, so the family might be rewarded by twice the skill in hunting each brother possessed. — P.J. Parker

Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer's own life. — Eudora Welty

Peace will not occur magically because one or two individuals awaken to the truth of the nature of harmony and order. Peace will only prosper when the principle of harmonious order becomes common sense rather than a novel idea. — Ilchi Lee

...there is a constant theme at the centre of all her writings which forms the heart of her vision of God, From her earliest novel to the mature vision of her autobiography, the central importance of unity, reconciliation, one-ness, is reiterated; for she came increasingly to see everything in life, even the darkness of fear and pain and suffering, as part of the one perfect whole that is Creation, that tiny hazelnut of Dame Julian's vision that was all that is made. — Christine Rawlins

The overdressed traveler betrays more interest in being seen than in seeing, while the true traveler knows that the novel world about her serves as the most appropriate accessory. — Gregory Maguire

I think: perhaps the sky is a huge sea of fresh water and we, instead of walking under it, walk on top of it; perhaps we see everything upside down and the earth is a kind of sky, so that when we die, when we die, we fall and sink into the sky. — Jose Luis Peixoto

It's said that there's three sides to a story: yours, mine, and the truth. Check out God in Wingtip Shoes and The Prison Plumb Line to explore all three. — Yvonne J. Medley

We the People . . . The People of the Long House. — P.J. Parker

If you see oppression, violence, injustice and evil deeds, unzip your silence and uncaring indifference, do something and act against all these unethical instances." ~ Angelica Hopes, an excerpt from my novel, If I Could Tell You — Angelica Hopes

I write for those who desire, not publication at any cost, but publication one can be proud of
serious, honest fiction, the kind of novel that readers will find they enjoy reading more than once, the kind of fiction likely to survive. — John Gardner

When we share in each other's grief and pain, we lighten it. Or maybe we just give each other permission to feel it fully and, through that act of acceptance, the grief becomes more bearable. Because, like the rain, tears too have an end. And with deep emotions, we are open to each other in unexpected ways. — Karpov Kinrade

The Loon Charm

To A Life Filled with A Love Whose Voice Always Calls You Home — Viola Shipman

You do not write a novel for praise, or thinking of your audience. You write for yourself; you work out between you and your pen the things that intrigue you — Bret Easton Ellis

I told a doctor once, Doc, if you want to know what's inside of me, put down the x-ray and pick up my novel! — Gerard De Marigny

Speak up and speak clearly. I want to hear what you have to say because it matters. Let's listen to each other and respect one another's opinions. Although, they may be different, wisdom allows us to be responsible for our own feelings and actions. — Felicia Johnson

There is no right or wrong way to write a novel. Each journey is different for every individual work and for every writer. The first error is never to begin; the second is never to finish. — Don Roff

Suffering is tossed by handfuls over the multitudes, with most of it falling on some people and little or none of it on others. — Jose Luis Peixoto

Those words are from Lynda Barry's novel 'Cruddy.' I've carried them with me for some time. There's a lot in my life I wasn't expecting. One is the realization that I stood at this pulpit and delivered a reading for my own graduation ... 15 years ago. Unexpectedly, I'm old. — Jack Dorsey

A novel takes the courage of a marathon runner, and as long as you have to run, you might as well be a winning marathon runner. Serendipity and blind faith faith in yourself won't hurt a thing. All the bastards in the world will snicker and sneer because they haven't the talent to zip up their flies by themselves. To hell with them, particularly the critics. Stand in there, son, no matter how badly you are battered and hurt. — Leon Uris

You can't write ... on the strength of influence. You can only write a good story or a good novel by yourself. — Richard Ford

Travel is useful, it exercises the imagination. All the rest is disappointment and fatigue. Our journey is entirely imaginary. That is its strength.
It goes from life to death. People, animals, cities, things, all are imagined. It's a novel, just a fictitious narrative. Littre says so and he's never wrong.
And besides, in the first place, anyone can do as much. You just have to close your eyes.
It's on the other side of life. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

In adopting the form of the adventure novel, Wells deepened it, raised its intellectual value, and brought into it elements of social philosophy and science. In his own field - though, of course, on a proportionately lesser scale - Wells may be likened to Dostoyevsky, who took the form of the cheap detective novel and infused it with brilliant psychological analysis. — Yevgeny Zamyatin

Memories help make us who we are.(Taken from novel...A Very English Affair) — Faith Mortimer

Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories, the streets, the cathedrals of the imagination. — Janet Frame

Do you plan on marrying Charles?"
She shook her head.
"Good. I wouldn't want to shoot him, but I would."
... Finding Promise — Scarlett Dunn

The Day of Trouble is Near — P.J. Parker

Life is travelled at a pace one decides for themselves — Chandra Sekhar

Someone once told me that we move when it becomes less painful than staying where we are. — Anne Hines

To reflect the entire spectrum, the dynamics of the adventure novel must be invested with a philosophic synthesis of one kind or another. — Yevgeny Zamyatin

You're not going to write the greatest novel ever written.
Nor will I.
Nor will anyone.
Why? Because the greatest novel ever written is subjective and means something different to every person.
So don't focus on writing the greatest novel of all time.
Instead, focus on writing the greatest novel you've ever written. — Sarah M. Cradit

If we know ourselves, and know our hearts, we're always home, anywhere. — Dawn Kohler

I would like to carve my novel in a piece of wood. My characters - I would like to have them heavier, more three-dimensional ... My characters have a profession, have characteristics; you know their age, their family situation, and everything. But I try to make each one of those characters heavy, like a statue, and to be the brother of everybody in the world. — Georges Simenon

In life, if a door closes, all you need to do is move to the window; as long as your whiskers can clear the space you will move through effortlessly. quote by T.G. the Feline Goddess of Everything and Everyone — R. Rose

No matter how hard it is, or how hard it gets, don't ever, ever, ever lose hope! — Jim Yackel

I started out hoping to remind people at some point in the novel that we should be loving and kind. But then the theme usurped my life, spilling over into my novels until love was no longer a small voice, but now my purpose as a writer. — Patricia Hickman

Every novel is an attempt to capture time, to weave something solid out of air. The author knows it is an impossible task - that is why he keeps on trying. — David Beaty

One does not have to be a priest to be a man! — Geraldine Brooks

It's like people don't only look good when they look like a magazine. People can be aesthetically beautiful in the way sunsets and leaves and things are. — Laura Tims

Well, one day all the world's wizards and witches will kneel before Jesus and call Him 'Lord. — Jim Yackel

For whom do you cry, my son?" the Great Spirit asked.
"I do not know."
"Yes, you do. — P.J. Parker

We must love our slaves, Papa. We must love them as hard as we are able. — P.J. Parker

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

Life is like a friendship, eventually it will end, by conflict or God's hand"
-Sons In The Clouds — Randy Mitchell

While the music played a whole eternity went by like life in a novel — Boris Pasternak

Precarious, life is. A flying leap. A sweep of hand. A star flung across the night. A lucky catch in this whirling juggling circus act.
From Steam Drills, Treadmills, and Shooting Stars — Rivera Sun

Everyone needs a place to let go and unwind from life, mine happens to be where pencil meets paper. — Brandy Nacole

Do not fret, my brother, my child. For the buffalo will roam the plains once more. — P.J. Parker

From the moment of birth, folks suddenly wanted what others said they could not have. Kids craved the most sugary sweets how alcoholics thirsted for one more drink with the most impactful punch. — Jermaine Watkins

I suppose it's why I usually loved to get lost in a good romance novel, because it would let me escape into the fantasy that I hoped to make come true one day. -Kate, Zack — Sawyer Bennett

I just want you, to be mine, forever. I want a piece of you no one else has ever had, and I want you to own my heart forever. — Ashley Beale