Only The Heart Novel Quotes & Sayings

Being with Demetri wasn't the absence of pain, it was the added presence of peace, making it easier and easier for that little part of my heart to heal again.
From Pull: A Seaside Novel — Rachel Van Dyken

These self-appointed deacons in the Church of Latter-Day American Literature seem to regard generosity (of words) with suspicion, texture with dislike, and any broad literary stroke with outright hate. The result is a strange and arid literary climate where a meaningless little fingernail paring like Nicholson Baker's Vox becomes an object of fascinated debate and dissection, and a truly ambitious American novel like Matthew's Heart of the Country is all but ignored. — Stephen King

You said my name and my heart went rogue — Zandile

If your novel seems to be dragging, one of the first places to look is at the heart of your lead character. Is he giving up too easily? Has she been taking it too long? Are there too many scenes where he's thinking and not doing? - James Scott Bell — Anonymous

Here's what I want from a book, what I demand, what I pray for when I take up a novel and begin to read the first sentence: I want everything and nothing less, the full measure of a writer's heart. I want a novel so poetic that I do not have to turn to the standby anthologies of poetry to satisfy that itch for music, for perfection and economy of phrasing, for exactness of tone. Then, too, I want a book so filled with story and character that I read page after page without thinking of food or drink because a writer has possessed me, crazed with an unappeasable thirst to know what happens next. — Pat Conroy

I concede that a bad romantic novel is embarrassing and indefensible. So is a bad so-called realistic novel. (And it is usually pretentious into the bargain which is insufferable.) But a good romantic novel is a heart-warming thing which strikes a responsive chord in those who are happy and offers a certain lifting of the spirits to those who are not. — Mary Burchell

No matter how many miles I move away, my love will always remain within the boundary of your heart
Lines from Love Vs Destiny ... — Atul Purohit

A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage tells of a young boy's travels through the black heart of Depression American and his search for light both metaphorical and real. Writing with a controlled lyrical passion, Marly Youmans has crafted the finest, and the truest period novel I've read in years. — Lucius Shepard

You will stay up all night reading this brilliant and devastating novel the way you might have with a new best friend in junior high-one whose revelations thrilled and terrified you, and whose raw, hard-earned wisdom remade the way you saw the world. It evokes the genius of Angela Pneumans canonical progenitors: Flannery O'Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, Walker Percy. Lay It on My Heart is a gorgeous, riveting, and unforgettable book. — Julie Orringer

When I do a novel, I don't really use the script, I use the book; when I did Apocalypse Now, I used Heart of Darkness. Novels usually have so much rich material. — Francis Ford Coppola

I'm just giving you some spiel, the ludicrous plot of a novel, a story I invented to touch your heart - one-third bullshit, one-third booze, and one-third genuine tenderness, you know the kind of thing. — Antonio Lobo Antunes

Was this love? Because it hurt. It felt like a bit of glass stuck somewhere important - his heart or his head. And it was throbbing.
Novel You Against Me — Jenny Downham

Your heart is yours to give, it is no ones to take. Not a queen. Not a prince. No one. — Stormy Smith

What did he say? He is in love? My brain stops, my heart stops, my blood ceases to flow. My appendages go weak and cold, and there is a suspension of all space and time as the universe comes into perfect alignment. — Julie Sarff

To this day, 'The Duke and I' remains particularly close to my heart; I felt it was the novel in which my writing took a huge leap forward. — Julia Quinn

No man goes out upon a novel expedition without misgivings.

The Secret Places of The Heart (Kindle Loc 245) — H.G.Wells

A locked-room problem lies at the heart of my new novel, 'In The Morning I'll Be Gone,' in which an RUC detective has to find out whether a publican's daughter who fell off a table in a bar that was locked from the inside was in fact murdered. — Adrian McKinty

If a poem is concentrated, a closed fist, then a novel is relaxed and expansive, an open hand: it has roads, detours, destinations; a heart line, a head line; morals and money come into it. Where the fist excludes and stuns, the open hand can touch and encompass a great deal in its travels. — Sylvia Plath

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

You see, that's the thing about a girl,
Her kisses leave you breathless
Her eyes become your world
But it never seems to matter where she stops, lingers or starts
She'll sometimes revive it,
sometimes break it,
but she will always steal your heart — Michele L. Rivera

In this astonishing novel Amirrezvani reminds us what all human hearts suffer and dare. Equal of the Sun is an irresistible novel. — Jonis Agee

A great work must be novel without being far-fetched, frequently sublime, but always natural. The author must know the human heart, and how to make it speak; he must be a poet, without letting any of his characters speak like poets; and he must be a master of his language, using it purely and harmoniously and not letting the rhyme interfere with the sense. — Voltaire

A novel is not, after all, a historical document, but a way to travel through the human heart. — Julia Alvarez

At the heart of every successful romance novel lies the evolution of its characters. Through love, heroes and heroines grow not only into a perfect match, but into stronger, better, more admirable people. — Sarah MacLean

Thrilling, illuminating, heart-pounding. Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy reads like a crackling espionage novel and resonates as only the most compelling history can. Abbott brings to vivid life four extraordinary and audacious women, and runs glorious roughshod over all our traditional notions of the role of women in the Civil War. — Megan Abbott

I'm Tiny And My Reach Is Limited. I Can Give YOU Only What I Have And Surely When I Give, I Don't Keep Anything For Me. To YOU, It's Nothing Probably As YOU've Got Everything. My Everything Would Be Unnoticed. It Seems Like "A Rain Drop To The Ocean" ... (From The Romantic Story "Reflection of The Rainbow") ... — Muhammad Imran Hasan

Be myself. If only I remembered what it was like to be myself. I'm a fucking waitress in a crappy bar in a small town in the middle of nowhere. I was going nowhere. I had nothing to give him beside myself and my heart and he denied me. — Stephanie Witter

Chief Johnson has full faith on us. Which means if I can complete this task and hunt down the murderer, not only does the chief won't feel any uncertainty on Anthony and I, but the spirits of the victims can move on. It sounds silly to believe that the undead is still around, but it is the truth. And since I have a good heart, I must use it. — Simi Sunny

The finest SF comes to grips with life's mysteries, with our resentments against our own natures and our limited societies. It does so by asking basic questions in the artful, liberating way that is unique to this form of writing. Echoes of it are found in other forms of fiction - in the novel of ideas, in the historical novel, in the writings of the great philosophers and scientists; but the best SF does this all more searchingly, by taking what is in most people only a moment of wonder and rebellion against the arbitrariness of existence and making of it an art enriched by knowledge and possibility, expressing our deepest human longing to penetrate into the dark heart of the unknown. — George Zebrowski

Bela had thought she knew what love felt like, but when she saw Sanjay at the airport after six long months, her heart gave a great, hurtful lurch, as though it were trying to leap out of her body to meet him. This, she thought. This is it. But it was only part of the truth. She would learn over the next years that love can feel a lot of different ways, and sometimes it can hurt a lot more. — Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

To B-major or B-minor: that is the question. Consider that the major and minor chords are separated by the smallest tonal step which is one half-step carrying in its pitch the gravity of all humanity which needs the major to recognize its relative, inherent tragedy which once given expression seeks the resurrection that only the major can procreate which self-expression gives beauty to the harmony of the major which then confirms the whole truth of the tragic minor saga which overcomes the hidden hand of destiny in the great ellipse of being and the greater cosmic void of nothingness which passage of time has sadly destined to be replayed in the same octave of the ineluctable modality of the audible which ellipse with such a simple twist resonates as infinity which is both meaningless beyond all human capacity for understanding but which holds within it the ubiquitous mystic beauty and truth of the pulsing human heart. — David B. Lentz

The life of the body, reduced to its
essentials, paradoxically produces an abstract and gratuitous universe, continuously denied, in its turn, by
reality. This type of novel, purged of interior life, in which men seem to be observed behind a pane of
glass, logically ends, with its emphasis on the pathological, by giving itself as its unique subject the
supposedly average man. In this way it is possible to explain the extraordinary number of "innocents"
who appear in this universe. The simpleton is the ideal subject for such an enterprise since he can only be
defined - and completely defined - by his behavior. He is the symbol of the despairing world in which
wretched automatons live in a machine-ridden universe, which American novelists have presented as a
heart-rending but sterile protest. — Albert Camus

Oh, oh. My heart starts that quivering, fluttering thing it does whenever he hints at his desire for me. Lacing his fingers through mine, he moves to close the gap between us. I know he's only holding my hand, but it's the manner in which his fingers curl around mine, and the way his eyes bore into me that makes it seem much more intimate. — Siobhan Davis

Every American autobiography, someone once said, is about one thing - escape. Look into the frightened heart of an American life, and you'll find a compulsion to flee - a seed planted in the national character at the start by those ships sailing out of Europe and landing on our shores.
- Teller: A Novel — Frederick Weisel

Life seemed ideal to him right then, and he was happy for the first time in a long time, and it felt like the sun was shining from his heart. - from the novel Brainjob by David Sloma. — David Sloma

When asked why I write, I say it is why I breathe. How I make my heart beat with life. It must be done so I can exist." The Man With the Green Suitcase — Dee Doanes

At last an authentic voice from Saudi Arabia. Al-Mohaimeed has written a remarkable, rhythmic, genuine novel. Wolves of the Crescent Moon throbs with sensuality and moral courage, as if it didn't take place in a society that denies the tick of the heart. — Hanan Al-Shaykh

Once in every few publishing seasons there is an Event. For no apparent reason, the great heart of the Public gives a startled jump, and the public's great purse is emptied to secure copies of some novel which has stolen into the world without advance advertising and whose only claim to recognition is that The Licensed Victuallers' Gazette has stated in a two-line review that it is 'readable'. — P.G. Wodehouse

After reading Edgar Allan Poe. Something the critics have not noticed: a new literary world pointing to the literature of the 20th Century. Scientific miracles, fables on the pattern A+ B, a clear-sighted, sickly literature. No more poetry but analytic fantasy. Something monomaniacal. Things playing a more important part than people; love giving away to deductions and other forms of ideas, style, subject and interest. The basis of the novel transferred from the heart to the head, from the passion to the idea, from the drama to the denouement. — Jules De Goncourt

Anne could do no more; but her heart prophesied some mischance to damp the perfection of her felicity. — Jane Austen

If you always dreamed of writing a novel or a memoir, and you used to love to write, and were pretty good at it, will it break your heart if it turns out you never got around to it? If you wake up one day at eighty, will you feel nonchalant that something always took precedence over a daily commitment to discovering your creative spirit? If not
if this very thought fills you with regret
then what are you waiting for? — Anne Lamott

Action is the pulse of any good story, but the character is the heart. If the action has no consequence to the character, the story loses heart. — Linda W. Yezak

I turned away from him and went on my way, up the street and about my business. The past was dead. The future was resignation, fatality, and could only end one way now. The present was numbness, that could feel nothing. Like Novocaine needled into your heart. What was there in all the dimensions of time for me? ("Life Is Weird Sometimes" first chapter of unpublished novel THE LOSER) — Cornell Woolrich

No novel is anything, for the purposes either of comedy or tragedy, unless the reader can sympathise with the characters whose names he finds upon the pages. Let an author so tell his tale as to touch his reader's heart and draw his tears, and he has, so far, done his work well. Truth let there be, --truth of description, truth of character, human truth as to men and women. If there be such truth, I do not know that a novel can be too sensational. — Anthony Trollope

What am I to you?'
Sophiel smiled.
'The sun. You are my sun, like Astrid said. My sun, that lights up my life. That looks after me with its fiery rays. I only have to turn towards it for it to set fire to my heart. — A.O. Esther

We at the Christian Writers Guild couldn't be more proud of Brandy Vallance. Let her debut novel transport you to an entirely fresh time and place where you'll soon forget you're turning pages and find yourself riveted to the destinies of characters who'll leave a lasting impression on your heart. — Jerry B. Jenkins

I am, as it were, the created creating - a paradox, for all its rhetorical trappings, at the beating heart of our shared human journey, and one I invite you to struggle with just as I have while, day in and day out, word by word and line by line, constructing a fictitious autobiography for myself in these pages. — Sol Luckman

In order to find meaning and readerly pleasure in the universe the writer reveals to us, we feel we must search for the novel's secret center, and we therefore try to embed every detail of the novel in our memory, as if learning each leaf of a tree by heart. — Orhan Pamuk

Many years from now when your children ask what New York City was like just after 9/11, this will be the book you give them in response. It's an exquisite novel full of heart, soul, passion and intelligence, and it's the one this great New York author was born to write. — Lee Child

Get your sticky fingers away from my cookies," Ben ordered, without turning his head, to see Jaxton trying to steal one from the cooking tray.
"You weren't saying that last night," Jaxton retaliated, coming up to Ben's side, to give him a nudge. They were both smiling, while looking down at the counter, where Ben was making his delicious rosemary cookies. "In fact, I seem to remember you grabbing my sticky fingers and putting them in your mouth," he teased, speaking quietly, so that Lyon wouldn't hear them at the other side of the room.
Ben turned to Jaxton and abandoned his baking, to catch his face in flour covered hands and plant a deep kiss on his lips.
Jaxton opened his mouth, in acceptance of his kiss.

~ From the Heart — Elaine White

The world is always full of the sound of waves.
The little fishes, abandoning themselves to the waves, dance and sing, and play, but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it depth? — Eiji Yoshikawa

One should learn to connect the bridge between the heart and the mind. That's what crowns you with eternity, and makes you the master of your own life rather than a slave of someone else's. — Iva Kenaz

A novel is not an allegory ... It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won't be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing. — Azar Nafisi

I have a theory of my own about what the art of the novel is, and how it came into being ... It happens because the storyteller's own experience ... has moved him to an emotion so passionate that he can no longer keep it shut up in his heart. — Murasaki Shikibu

I'm working on different fields. One of my next books Insha'Allah will be a novel because it's important to explore the heart and imagination, the spiritual side. I've been working for twenty five years in the legal field and now I'm reaching what I want, which is an Islamic applied ethics and I'm also dealing with Muslims in the West. — Tariq Ramadan

Always write exactly what you're feeling at the exact moment when writing something like poetry or an emotional novel. Put yourself, pour all emotions into your work ... make yourself cry, feel joy if you are writing joyful things, feel lovey if it calls for it ... just put your heart and soul into all that you do ... then you will be a good writer when you can make whoever reads your work, feel. -Nina Jean Slack — Nina Jean Slack