Book Quotes

It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.

We are possessed by nobody, not even by ourselves.

Long, long into the night I lay--thinking of you.

You can't always keep trouble away. That doesn't mean you have to offer it a chair to sit on.

This is just what human beings do--turn objects into people, people into objects.

That's the American Dream: to make your life into something you can sell.

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

You never take art for what it is--beauty, ultimate meaning, form for its own sake, self-subsisting, oh no. It's always got to be either sneered at or attacked as evil.

He didn't so much as have hopes, for hope distracts, and he had a great deal to see to.

Misery was somehow mixed up with all this happiness.

Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.

I want you to know that no matter how much you hurt me, you cannot hurt my love.

Life is a message scribbled in the dark.

He was his own cancellation.

"Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule."

Elmer Gantry was drunk. He was eloquently drunk, lovingly and pugnaciously drunk.

It's always the next generation. I never could understand why they were always the generation that mattered--the next generation. They're always supposed to be better or smarter or more important. And we're supposed to sacrifice for them.