Novelists From The United States

"We are experiencing these mysterious coincidences, and even though we don't understand them yet, we know they are real. We are sensing again, as in childhood, that there is another side of life that we have yet to discover, some other process operating behind the scenes."

"Certainly this consciousness has been experienced and described before... the Manuscript says the number of people who are conscious of such coincidences would begin to grow dramatically... He said that this growth would continue... we would reach a specific level of such individuals a level I think of as a critical mass."

"The Eighth Insight... is about using energy in a new way when relating to people in general, but it begins at the beginning, with children... We should view them as they really are, as end points in evolution that lead us forward. But in order to learn to evolve they need our energy on a constant basis, unconditionally."

"The Manuscript predicts... that once we reach this critical mass, the entire culture will begin to take these coincidental experiences seriously."

"We will wonder, in mass, what mysterious process underlies human life on this planet. And it will be this question, asked at the same time by enough people, that will allow the other insights to also come into consciousness because according to the Manuscript, when a sufficient number of individuals seriously question what's going on in life, we will begin to find out."

"Haven't you ever been around someone who makes you feel guilty when you’re in their presence, even though you know there is no reason to feel this way?... it's because you have entered the drama world of a poor me. p.81"

"Did he say why most church officials were fighting against it? Yes, because it challenges the completeness of their religion. Apparently the... insights extend some of the church's traditional ideas in a way that alarms the church elders, who think things are fine the way they are. p. 9"

"The scholars who first translated the Manuscript were absolutely convinced of its authenticity. Mainly because it was written in Aramaic, the same language in which much of the Old Testament was written. Aramaic in South America? How did it get there in 600 B.C? The priest didn't know... Does his church support the Manuscript?.. Most of the clergy were bitterly trying to suppress the Manuscript. p. 9"

"Magic makes for a slippery concept. Like "gender," "race," or any other term that can be picked apart as a social construction—which of course means all of our terms, every attempt at producing order through language and —the word "magic" does not simply express a straightforward, self-evident reality, but rather creative reimagining on the part of everyone who uses it. Magic's meaning is continually shaped and reshaped by changes in our knowledge, values, and prejudices. Scholars writing about magic today, when confronted with the matter of definitions, often chose to simply admit the incoherence and uselessness of the topic and then move forward with their projects."

"I folded the paper and wriggled around in the seat. Buses are like candy bars, I thought. The price goes up and the size goes down. Each new bus seem to have less leg room and a lower headrest that its predecessor, so that you had to be a contortionist to take a nap."

"We’ll jump off that bridge when we come to it."

"“‘Morning, Sam,” the coffee boy said. “How about some coffee?” “‘Morning, Herb,” I said. “That’s the first intelligent remark I’ve heard in some time.”"

"I’d better get back to work. It’s like butting my head against a stone wall, but somebody’s got to keep butting, if only for the sake of other people’s morale."

"“Thank you,” she said icily. “I accept your good wishes and your resignation. And you can go to hell, Dave Hull.” Dave went to Texas."

"“I’m good for about thirty bucks,” I said. “Then I’ll have to get a refill from petty cash.” “There’s nothing petty about cash,” Stew said."

"You’re as nutty as a peck of pecans, ma’am."

"“What do you think of it, old man?” I thought very little of it but I pretended to turn it over in my mind. “It’s got class,” I said finally. To myself I thought, with a capital K."

"“I’ve made my choice, Sam,” she had written. “I had to choose between what I wanted and what I could get. There are times when the ideal is just too unattainable and when the second best becomes, in the long run, the best. Maybe this also has a universal application. I hope so.”"

"I know the world does not need another book from me, but I have nothing else to do with myself. I have no hobbies. So then I feel guilty when I say to my agent, ‘I seem to have another book ready if you want to take a look at it…’"

"…‘I think I was a better writer when I was younger.’…I was more detailed, I took more time. It’s not as if I’m in a rush now, but I trust the reader more. I don’t feel like I have to say that much about the character’s inner feelings. But then as I read The Accidental Tourist I thought, ‘Well, it’s kind of nice to see all of Macon’s inner feelings there.’"

"Toni Morrison, Kay Boyle, Philip Roth, Peter Matthiessen, Anne Tyler, and Rosellen Brown read an unknown manuscript and responded with those quotes and marks of approval that appear on book jackets. These were completely unsolicited and I still find it remarkable that these writers, overwhelmed with pleas and manuscripts, picked up Love Medicine and responded. There were a great number of people kind along the way. One hears much more about the egomania and posturing of writers than one does about the devotion that writers have for one another's work."

"The whole point of art, for me, is to give us tools to explore feelings or situations or dilemmas that defeat our other ways of making meaning. When a situation is so vertiginous, so ethically complex, so emotionally fraught, that I feel like I’m staring into an abyss—that’s when I feel moved to make art, when I feel I need the peculiar tools of fiction to figure out what I think. I mean, to inhabit my bewilderment. I think art is the realm in which we can give full rein to the ambiguity, uncertainty, and doubt that we often feel we have to suppress in other kinds of expression—in our political speech, say. I think an ability to dwell in ambiguity, uncertainty, and doubt is a central virtue of humanness. I think it’s crucial to any thinking that might adequately capture the complexity of reality."

"…for me the great human virtue is promiscuity, the fact that we love mixture, that we are excited by collisions between cultures, languages, traditions. This is why I’m so disgusted by the rejection of this virtue by nationalists of various stripes—and also why I’m resistant to “stay in your lane” condemnations of “cultural appropriation.” Of course, encounters with the other are fraught with peril and—like any ethically meaningful human endeavor—inherently “problematic.” Of course, we need to be mindful and reverent as we attempt to reach across borders of various kinds. But any attempt to build walls—between bodies, between cultural traditions, between languages and aesthetics—is abhorrent to me."

"I really do think of prose as writing sentences. I never think to myself “I’m writing a novel”. Not until I’m very deep into a project do I even think “I’m writing a book”. The kind of sentence I’m attracted to is a kind of navigating device where the sentence itself is moving me through the world and is the tool by which I am able to feel out a territory or a set of concerns."

"I’m more in touch with my emotions and the visceral sensory from childhood than any other part of life. I don’t know if it helps with creativity, but I do know that when I talk to other writers they talk about their childhood in great detail."

"…There’s a way in which I hope the nine chapters are like spheres of intensity that are placed in a relationship that is not the consequence of plot or the linearity of chronology, but is instead a kind of constellation, that there are charged relationships between them that is like a key change, or a mood, or an echo, or a motif. That may sound pretentious, but I think there’s a place for pretentiousness in art."

"I am very comfortable writing as a man, and I think that’s because I had really good men in my life. They made me feel comfortable and I thought, ‘OK, they’re not so different from me…’"

"Mostly I'm telling people that they don't have to be victims. They can be survivors but I don't as a rule put "messages" in my writing."

"Exchange information, learn to speak sensibly about any subject, learn to express your thoughts, accept new ones, examine them, analyze. Think objectively. Think toward the future."

"When bad fortune occurs, the unresourceful, unimaginative man looks about him to attach the blame to someone else; the resolute accepts misfortune and endeavors to survive, mature, and improve because of it."

"Drummer, beat, and piper, blow, Harper, strike, and soldier, go. Free the flame and sear the grasses Till the dawning Red Star passes."

"Who wills, Can. Who tries, Does. Who loves, Lives."

"Suddenly, from another direction came the thwack, thwack of two stones fired in quick succession. They landed squarely on the [hyena]'s head and [it] dropped in its tracks."

""With a spear, you only need a strong arm," Brun said. "And strong legs and heart, and good lungs, and a great deal of courage," Zoug replied."

"There are forces stronger than any magic, but it worked for many years. No one understands spirits completely, not even Mog-ur."

"Loss is a defending human experience. Nothing in the physical world lasts forever. Memory of what has been lost can be both ennobling and painful."

"History teaches us that civilizations flourish, die and disappear. Sometimes they died swiftly, sometimes in a slow lingering death. And sometimes, as with Rome and others, echoes of that civilization find new life in later cultures. To lose the conscious memory of an entire civilization is especially tragic and dangerous, because each civilization, no matter how grand or flawed, is a laboratory of human ideas and ideals, of dreams and nightmares. We can learn from all of them."

"Lesbianism is the ultimate expression of a feminist philosophy."

"He had no choice. And that one thing turned Heaven into Hell."

""Later!" The word, the voice, the attitude. I'd never heard anyone use "later" to say goodbye before. It sounded harsh, curt, and dismissive, spoken with the veiled indifference of people who may not care to see or hear from you again. It is the first thing I remember about him, and I can hear it still today. Later!"

"“It’s bigger than death, Aubry.” “You’re wrong,” he said, his voice utterly chill. “Nothing is bigger than death.”"

"“Cynical bastard, aren’t you?” “Every man is a mirror,” Nozawa said flatly. “We all reflect what we see.”"

"No man escapes Death. So Death must not be the enemy. Life must not be the prize. It must be the gameboard, on which Death teaches its savage lessons. You could heed those lessons, or ignore them, but never evade them. Death, then, was the ally. Not to be sought, but heeded."

"Aubry looked at her without shifting his head. Damn, she was lovely. An unpleasant question remained: What where they to each other? It was hard to say sometimes. Did he truly feel love, or just the effects of the Cyloxibin mushroom? And was there a difference?"

"Marketing is finding women who like sex or would like to find out if they do. Sales is convincing them that they want to go home with YOU, right NOW."

"It was on one of those terrible, fever-clouded days when the serpent beneath southern California awoke. It stretched from slumber, shedding its skin, the screams of its wrath heard in the shriek of tortured steel, of splintering wood and concrete. Maxine was torn from her slumber by the moans of the dying and the awful sound of her ramshackle apartment shifting on its foundations. “Earthquake!” She pulled herself from the bed, stumbled from her building into the street, and watched the lurching structures and snapping powerlines, the buckling sidewalks and exploding water mains, as a seismic debt long outstanding came due."

"What's your name?" The computer asks. I look down at my sheet toga. "I am the great philosopher Pendulus!" "Incorrect."

"As a chemist, Vogel knew how to make a bomb. In fact, much of his training was to avoid making them by mistake."

"This allowed me to do what writers treasure more than anything else: catch the reader off-guard. There’s nothing better than knowing you’re going to outwit with the reader. And the type of people who read sci-fi are very difficult to outwit."

"The price of chemical ecstasy was a dear one, paid in flesh and spirit."