Latest Quotes

“We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.”

— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

“The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.”

— Samuel Beckett, Murphy

“Our hero was not one of those Dominican cats everybody’s always going on about—he wasn’t no home-runner hitter or fly bachetero, not a playboy with a million hots on his jock.”

— Junot Dìaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“One day, I was already old, in the entrance of a public place a man came up to me.”

— Marguerite Duras, The Lover

“In my earliest memory, my grandfather is bald as a stone and he takes me to see the tigers.”

— Téa Obreht, The Tiger's Wife: A Novel

“My brain was drowning in grease.”

— Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles.”

— Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero

“It was a pleasure to burn.”

— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451: A Novel

“Quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941.”

— Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (Vintage International)

“The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed.”

— Stephen King, The Gunslinger

“The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we understood the gravity of our situation.”

— Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“The war in Zagreb began over a pack of cigarettes.”

— Sara Nović, Girl at War: A Novel

“‘You are full of nightmares,’ Harriet tells me.”

— James Baldwin, Going to Meet the Man: Stories

“For a long time I would go to bed early.”

— Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Volume I

“Of what is great one must either be silent or speak with greatness.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will To Power

“It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.”

— Paul Auster, City of Glass

“Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster.”

— Vladimir Nabokov, Laughter in the Dark

“Oh pussycat, I’m so glad to hear your voice,’ the girl’s mother said on the telephone.”

— Jonathan Franzen, Purity: A Novel

“The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne. The prevention of many suicides will continue to be hindered until there is a general awareness of the nature of this pain.”

— William Styron, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness

“You do an awfully good impression of yourself.”

— Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park