February 15th, 2012 
Superstition is only the fear of belief, while religion is the confidence.
Countess of Blessington
Prejudices are the chains forged by ignorance to keep men apart.
Countess of Blessington
Archive for the ‘Novelist’ Category
Countess of Blessington
Maeve Binchy
I’m an escapist kind of writer.
Maeve Binchy
I was very pleased, obviously, to have outsold such great writers. But I’m not insane – I do realize that I am a popular writer who people buy to take on vacation.
Maeve Binchy
Earl Derr Biggers
Every man must wear out at least one pair of fools shoes.
Earl Derr Biggers
Only very brave mouse makes nest in cat’s ear.
Earl Derr Biggers
This is unexpected… like squirt from aggressive grapefruit.
Earl Derr Biggers
Careless shepherd make excellent dinner for wolf.
Earl Derr Biggers
Do not wave stick when trying to catch dog.
Earl Derr Biggers
Thomas Berger
The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.
Thomas Berger
Why do writers write? Because it isn’t there.
Thomas Berger
No matter what side of the argument you are on, you always find people on your side that you wish were on the other.
Thomas Berger
Louis de Bernieres
People taking photographs of their meals are not critics; they are from the United States.
Louis de Bernieres
The human heart likes a little disorder in its geometry.
Louis de Bernieres
Arnold Bennett
Journalists say a thing that they know isn’t true, in the hope that if they keep on saying it long enough it will be true.
Arnold Bennett
Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like.
Arnold Bennett
We shall never have more time. We have, and always had, all the time there is. No object is served in waiting until next week or even until tomorrow. Keep going… Concentrate on something useful.
Arnold Bennett
Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.
Arnold Bennett
Being a husband is a whole-time job. That is why so many husbands fail. They cannot give their entire attention to it.
Arnold Bennett
Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man.
Arnold Bennett
Happiness includes chiefly the idea of satisfaction after full honest effort. No one can possibly be satisfied and no one can be happy who feels that in some paramount affairs he failed to take up the challenge of life.
Arnold Bennett
Well, my deliberate opinion is – it’s a jolly strange world.
Arnold Bennett
Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission.
Arnold Bennett
Much ingenuity with a little money is vastly more profitable and amusing than much money without ingenuity.
Arnold Bennett
Of all the inhabitants of the inferno, none but Lucifer knows that hell is hell, and the secret function of purgatory is to make of heaven an effective reality.
Arnold Bennett
Always behave as if nothing had happened, no matter what has happened.
Arnold Bennett
If egotism means a terrific interest in one’s self, egotism is absolutely essential to efficient living.
Arnold Bennett
Gottfried Benn
Whoever wants to understand much must play much.
Gottfried Benn
Saul Bellow
California is like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn’t really need. You can quote me on that.
Saul Bellow
Psychoanalysis pretends to investigate the Unconscious. The Unconscious by definition is what you are not conscious of. But the Analysts already know what’s in it – they should, because they put it all in beforehand.
Saul Bellow
She was what we used to call a suicide blonde – dyed by her own hand.
Saul Bellow
There are evils that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever… money, for instance, or war.
Saul Bellow
With a novelist, like a surgeon, you have to get a feeling that you’ve fallen into good hands – someone from whom you can accept the anesthetic with confidence.
Saul Bellow
You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.
Saul Bellow
Conquered people tend to be witty.
Saul Bellow
Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.
Saul Bellow
Hapiness can only be found if you can free yourself of all other distractions.
Saul Bellow
I think that New York is not the cultural centre of America, but the business and administrative centre of American culture.
Saul Bellow
What is art but a way of seeing?
Saul Bellow
All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he’s a writer. It’s an aphrodisiac.
Saul Bellow
In Los Angeles all the loose objects in the country were collected, as if America had been tilted and everything that wasn’t tightly screwed down had slid into Southern California.
Saul Bellow
No realistic, sane person goes around Chicago without protection.
Saul Bellow
People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
Saul Bellow
When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
Saul Bellow
Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
Saul Bellow
Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love.
Saul Bellow
There is an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.
Saul Bellow
We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next.
Saul Bellow
Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.
Saul Bellow
Vicki Baum
Marriage always demands the greatest understanding of the art of insincerity possible between two human beings.
Vicki Baum
Success is as ice cold and lonely as the North Pole.
Vicki Baum
To be a Jew is a destiny.
Vicki Baum
You don’t get ulcers from what you eat. You get them from what’s eating you.
Vicki Baum
A woman who is loved always has success.
Vicki Baum
Fame always brings loneliness. Success is as ice cold and lonely as the North Pole.
Vicki Baum
Pity is the deadliest feeling that can be offered to a woman.
Vicki Baum
Augusto Roa Bastos
The things that have come into being change continually. The man with a good memory remembers nothing because he forgets nothing.
Augusto Roa Bastos
What happens is that your wretched memory remembers the words and forgets what’s behind them.
Augusto Roa Bastos
Anyone who attempts to relate his life loses himself in the immediate. One can only speak of another.
Augusto Roa Bastos
In all nations an exceptional man exists that compensates the deficiencies of the remainder. In those moments, when humanity is found collectively in a state of decadence, there always remain those exceptional beings as point of reference.
Augusto Roa Bastos
