Novelists From The United States

"Most of us are called on to perform tasks far beyond what we believe we can do. Our capabilities seldom match our aspirations, and we are often woefully unprepared. To this extent, we are all Assistant Pig-Keepers at heart."

"“What civilization would be complete without a cat?” the Professor went on. “What greater blessing to the home than the kindly yet watchful eye of this tiger of the fireside?”"

"He’s as impartial as a herring’s backbone, for he favors neither side and is attached to both!"

"“Didn’t you ever see a cat before?” “Of course I did,” said the boy. “Hundreds of them. But just because you’ve seen something, it doesn’t mean you stop looking. There’s always something you didn’t see before.”"

"“That’s another thing about emperors—and regents,” Gareth said. “They aren’t very fond of changes, even if the changes are for the better.”"

"“But I’m Pharaoh,” Neter-Khet said. “I’m supposed to give orders.” “That doesn’t mean anything to a cat,” said Jason. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you? “Nobody tells me,” Neter-Khet said. “I tell them. Besides, they were my cats, weren’t they?” “In a way they were,” Jason said, “and in a way they weren’t. A cat can belong to you, but you can’t own him. There’s a difference.”"

"Keep reading. It's one of the most marvelous adventures that anyone can have."

"Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it."

"Story, finally, is humanity's autobiography."

"The raw materials of story are the raw materials of all human cultures. Story deals with the same questions as theology, philosophy, psychology. It is concerned with polarities: love and hate, birth and death, joy and sorrow, loss and recovery."

"Our only hope for tomorrow is peace now."

"At heart, the issues raised in a work of fantasy are those we face in real life. In whatever guise—our own daily nightmares of war, intolerance, inhumanity; or the struggles of an Assistant Pig-Keeper against the Lord of Death—the problems are agonizingly familiar. And an openness to compassion, love and mercy, is as essential to us here and now as it is to any inhabitant of an imaginary kingdom."

"Fantasy, by its power to move us so deeply, to dramatize, even melo-dramatize, morality, can be one of the most effective means of establishing a capacity for adult values."

"In the algebra of fantasy, A times B doesn't have to equal B times A. But, once established, the equation must hold throughout the story."

"The muse in charge of fantasy wears good, sensible shoes."

"Laws assure animals of protection – formally, officially, set down in black and white. But in the long run, the best protection is the human heart."

"We have two lives, Roy, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness."

"Without heroes, we're all plain people, and don't know how far we can go."

"I don't think you can do anything for anyone without giving up something of your own."

"Levin wanted friendship and got friendliness; he wanted steak and they offered spam."

"If you ever forget you are a Jew a goy will remind you."

"Mourning is a hard business," Cesare said. "If people knew there'd be less death."

"… keep in mind that the purpose of freedom is to create it for others."

"There comes a time in a man's life when to get where he has to – if there are no doors or windows – he walks through a wall."

"I think I said "All men are Jews except they don't know it." I doubt I expected anyone to take the statement literally. But I think it's an understandable statement and a metaphoric way of indicating how history, sooner or later, treats all men."

"One can't make pure clay of time's mud. There is no life that can be recaptured wholly; as it was. Which is to say that all biography is ultimately fiction."

"If your train's on the wrong track every station you come to is the wrong station."

"Those who write about life, reflect about life…. you see in others who you are."

"Life is a tragedy full of joy."

"It was all those biographies in me yelling, “We want out. We want to tell you what we’ve done to you.”"

"If I may, I would at this point urge young writers not to be too much concerned with the vagaries of the marketplace. Not everyone can make a first-rate living as a writer, but a writer who is serious and responsible about his work, and life, will probably find a way to earn a decent living, if he or she writes well. A good writer will be strengthened by his good writing at a time, let us say, of the resurgence of ignorance in our culture. I think I have been saying that the writer must never compromise with what is best in him in a world defined as free."

"I have written almost all my life. My writing has drawn, out of a reluctant soul, a measure of astonishment at the nature of life. And the more I wrote well, the better I felt I had to write. In writing I had to say what had happened to me, yet present it as though it had been magically revealed. I began to write seriously when I had taught myself the discipline necessary to achieve what I wanted. When I touched that time, my words announced themselves to me. I have given my life to writing without regret, except when I consider what in my work I might have done better. I wanted my writing to be as good as it must be, and on the whole I think it is. I would write a book, or a short story, at least three times — once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say. Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one's fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to re-form it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing: The men and things of today are wont to lie fairer and truer in tomorrow's meadow, Henry Thoreau said. I don't regret the years I put into my work. Perhaps I regret the fact that I was not two men, one who could live a full life apart from writing; and one who lived in art, exploring all he had to experience and know how to make his work right; yet not regretting that he had put his life into the art of perfecting the work."

"Bernard Malamud was like a second father to [my husband] Clark and me: he was Clark's teacher and when I got married that event also meant our friendship. I loved his writing but I didn't think it had anything to do with my own literary vision, with my world, until I had a very low moment in my life, in 1984. I had then very little money left because of a racist wave in Canada, I was not allowed there any more and legally I could not even have a job; and I was sitting in the kitchen reading Bernard Malamud's Selected Stories (1983) that the writer had sent me himself and suddenly, out of my self-despair, I said, "My God, he is writing about the Jewish community, about their attempts to accommodate to and assimilate American culture or about their failing to do so, which is precisely what I want to write about my own community." And that was my inspiration, in a way, for Darkness (1985), my first collection of stories."

"(Which authors do you think your writing most closely resembles?) Mukherjee: I see a strong likeness between my writing and Bernard Malamud's, in spite of the fact that he describes the lives of East European Jewish immigrants and I talk about the lives of newcomers from the Third World. Like Malamud, I write about a minority community which escapes the ghetto and adapts itself to the patterns of the dominant American culture. Like Malamud's, my work seems to find quite naturally a moral center...Malamud most of all speaks to me as a writer and I admire his work a great deal. Immersing myself in his work gave me the self-confidence to write about my own community."

"Hodge sent me to wake you up. Actually, he offered to wake you up himself, but since it's five a.m., I figured you'd be less cranky if you had something nice to look at."

"He cut his glance toward Jace, who was walking a few paces ahead of them, apparently conversing with the cat. Clary wondered what they were talking about. Politics? Opera? The high price of tuna?"

"I thought it'd be something cooler, like a van with 'Death to Demons' painted on the outside, or . . ."

"He's probably never met a six-foot-tall hot elf-woman in a fur bikini, either,"

"Yeah, well, you clearly also couldn't be bothered to call me and tell me you were shacking up with some dyed-blond wanna-be goth you probably met at Pandemonium. After I spent the past three days wondering if you were dead." "I was not shacking up," Clary said, glad of the darkness as the blood rushed to her face. "And my hair is naturally blond," said Jace. "Just for the record."

"I've never asked, but I'm sure he has a fairly stringent policy about random teenagers lurking in his shrubbery."

"If you were half as funny as you thought you were, my boy, you'd be twice as funny as you are."

"Well there goes my plan for selling them on eBay," Clary muttered. "Selling them on what?" Clary smiled blandly at him. "A mythical place of great magical power."

"I figured all your classes were stuff like Slaughter 101 and Beheading for Beginners."

"You guessed? You must have been pretty sure, considering you could have killed me." "I was ninety percent sure." "I see," Clary said. There must have been something in her voice, because he turned to look at her. Her hand cracked across his face, a slap that rocked him back on his heels. He put his hand to his cheek, more in surprise than pain. "What the hell was that for?" "The other ten percent."

"Just because you call an electric eel a rubber duck doesn't make it a rubber duck, does it? And God help the poor bastard who decides they want to take a bath with the duckie."

"Is there anything I could get for you?" he asked. "Something to drink? Some tea?" "I don't want tea," said Clary, with a muffled force. "I want to find my mother. And then I want to find out who took her in the first place, and I want to kill them." "Unfortunately," said Hodge, "we're all out of bitter revenge at the moment, so it's either tea or nothing."

"Do you want to tell me what this is about, or should I just call the police?" "And tell them what?" Jace said witheringly. "That invisible people are bothering you? Trust me, little girl, the police aren't going to arrest someone they can't see."

"I'll get the coffee if you find us a seat. What do you want?" "Just coffee. Black – like my soul."

"Jesus!" Luke exclaimed. "Actually, it's just me," said Simon. "Although I've been told the resemblance is startling."

"Hi, I'm one of the knife-carrying hooligans you met last night in Pandemonium? I'm afraid I made a bad impression and was hoping you'd give me a chance to make it up to- " "SIMON!" Clary held the phone away from her ear as he cracked up laughing. "That is so not funny!"