Novella Rowson > Novella's Quotes

“The elements of the written word can be purely magical. I read and I write...I inspire and I’m living.”
― C. Toni Graham

“This is Detective Ashford Ishikawa. Who am I speaking with?”
“My name is Jack Ludefance. I’m a private investigator from Santa Rosaria and I’ve been retained by Cindy Hastings through her lawyer, Mr. Hooks, to investigate her father’s murder. Is there way we can get together to talk?”
“Why? What are we going to talk about, Mr. Ludefance?”
“As I said, Detective Ishikawa, I’ve been hired to investigate the case. I’ve read the police reports. My hat is off to you. Very thorough work.”
“Just doing my job. If you’ve read them, and I won’t ask how you got them, I’ll ask you again, what is there for us to talk about?”
“Detective, I’m not trying to do your job and I’m not asking you to do my job. This is of mutual interest to both of us. The sooner we solve the crime the better, yes? Think of it this way. I’m your helper.”
― Behcet Kaya, Appellate Judge

“I wanted solitude, but a treasure like that didn't exist in the city. I only found silence in Central Park, still littered with people of course, but the only place that held moments of calm. I breathed in that wonderful silence as my pace finally slowed, and nature delighted my senses.”
― Lee Matthew Goldberg, Slow Down

“In the 1960s, Valerie (Hobson) Profumo became the first show-business mother to talk publicly about Down’s syndrome. She was instrumental in founding Three Roses, England’s first charity to support families with Down’s children.”
― Anne Michaud, Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Nine Political Wives

“Usually I’m asked to solve a case that’s definitely real. Your distress is genuine, however, so I’ll see what I can find out, but I must warn you that I can’t be sure of success. A dream isn’t tangible evidence, after all.”
― Isabeau Vollhardt, The Casebook of Elisha Grey

“Take it from me, kid, sometimes it’s okay to run. You run as fast as you damn well can.”
― Barry Kirwan, The Eden Paradox

“It comes out so quietly that I have to ask her to repeat it: “It’s just that I thought maybe you were married to me.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

“... Sometimes -- in the rare moments when she wasn't causing quite serious mental discomfort -- being friends with Zoe was like being knocked dizzy by grace.”
― Chris Cleave

“They were just little families cooking beans and planting and hunting a deer now and then, and having babies and laying their old folks to rest, not harming anyone, just living...I know that Indians aren't no dirtier than any white folks and cleaner than some. Not stupid, either. But I saved my breath. The likes of her isn't going to listen nor be changed in the mind just from hearing sense. Some people sense is wasted on and that's purely a fact.”
― Nancy E. Turner, These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901, Arizona Territories

“I had seen the girl somewhere before. She was a slender girl in a glistening blue gown that exhibited a generous spread of front, back and arms that were worth showing. She had a mass of dark brown hair above an oval face of the color that pink ought to be. Her eyes were wide-set and of a gray shade that wasn't altogether unlike the shadows on polished silver that the poet had compared them to. "The Girl With The Silver Eyes”
― Dashiell Hammett

“It was a knockout blow - a punch so overwhelming that I didn't get back on my feet for fourteen years.”
― Henri Charrière

“But to believe that getting stuff is the purpose and aim of life is madness.”
― Hubert Selby Jr., Requiem for a Dream

“His mother always told him he would “be a real somebody, be important someday.” And now that she was gone, he wanted to prove her right all the more.”
― Sara Pascoe, Oswald the Almost Famous Opossum

“You shall address me as ‘My Dearest’,’ he repeated in a mocking voice, trying to copy her tone. ‘You will forget all about this conversation when you leave this room.’ It was interesting that tone; it had a sort of hypnotising ring to it.”
― Max Nowaz, The Three Witches and the Master

“People are becoming more and more like pets in digital cages, where the only meaning of their lives is to consume and isolate themselves from others like themselves.”
― Alexander Morpheigh, The Pythagorean

“We are humiliated and disillusioned once again by our own countrymen because they attempt to trample on us, which increases our isolation and unimportance.”
― Dorlies von Kaphengst Meissner Rasmussen, Escaping the Russian Onslaught: A Family’s Story of Fleeing the Russian Army after Hitler’s Nazi Regime

“Consider and then act, don't react. A worthy opponent will calculate his move to entice a response from you. Make your own play.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree

“Which is the greater sin? To care too much? Or too little?”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“You can use all the hundred dollar words you want,” said Vic, “women like that are like TNT. You go after their man, they’d sooner kill you than look at you.”
― A.G. Russo, The Cases Nobody Wanted

“The old man’s eyes sparked. “Elan of Ember, you I know, take me to your King.” He paused. “Now!” The old man spoke like a crack of thunder and red lightning flashed from his open hand. The portal gate beside Elan flashed with fire and disappeared. Without thought, Elan’s sword flew to his hand as he made towards the traveller. But again the red fire flashed. The sword glowed and like the gate, it was consumed by the fire. Elan collapsed, clutching the burnt fragments of his sword in his injured hand. “Take him to the King,” he grunted in pain. The guards did so without delay.”
― Robert Reid, White Light Red Fire

“There is a common emotion we all recognize and have not yet named—the happy anticipation of being able to feel contempt.”
― Thomas Harris, Hannibal

“I am passionate about the truth. Passion is very different from fundamentalism.”
― Richard Dawkins

“This is your life and its ending one moment at a time.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“Gossip is passing on information when you are neither part of the problem nor part of the solution.”
― Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

“It is a strange notion that the acknowledgment of a first principle is inconsistent with the admission of secondary ones. To inform a traveler respecting the place of his ultimate destination, is not to forbid the use of land-marks and direction-posts on the way. The proposition that happiness is the end and aim of morality, does not mean that no road ought to be laid down to that goal, or that persons going thither should not be advised to take one direction rather than another. Men really ought to leave off talking a kind of nonsense on this subject, which they would neither talk nor listen to on other matters of practical concernment. Nobody argues that the art of navigation is not founded on astronomy, because sailors cannot wait to calculate the Nautical Almanack. Being rational creatures, they go to sea with it ready calculated; and all rational creatures go out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on the common questions of right and wrong, as well as on many of the far more difficult questions of wise and foolish. And this, as long as foresight is a human quality, it is to be presumed they will continue to do. Whatever we adopt as the fundamental principle of morality, we require subordinate principles to apply it by: the impossibility of doing without them, being common to all systems, can afford no argument against any one in particular: but gravely to argue as if no such secondary principles could be had, and as if mankind had remained till now, and always must remain, without drawing any general conclusions from the experience of human life, is as high a pitch, I think, as absurdity has ever reached in philosophical controversy.”
― John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism

“The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend”
― Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception