Novelists From The United States

"You know, where I come from, the people who did this to a forest would be called pioneers—a very special breed of heroes, since instead of killing other human beings they concentrate on slaughtering nature itself."

"The prevailing breeze from the Forest blew into his face, and for the first time in many days he was able to distinguish the tang of the season. He found that the autumn of the Land had turned its corner, traveled its annual round from joy to sorrow. The air no longer gleamed with abundance and fruition, with ripeness either glad or grim. Now the breeze tasted like the leading edge of winter—a sere augury, promising long nights and barrenness and cold."

"Dreaming is like—it’s like being a slave. Your dreams come out of all the parts of you that you don’t have any control over."

"If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather hear something that makes sense."

"“That’s madness!” Covenant gasped thickly. Elena’s gaze wavered on the edge of focus, and he could not bear to look at her. “Do you think that some existence after death is going to vindicate you after you’ve simply extirpated life from the earth? That was exactly Kevin’s mistake. I tell you, he is roasting in hell!”"

"I was trying to give her something, make it up to her somehow. But that doesn’t work. When you’ve hurt someone that badly, you can’t go around giving them gifts. That’s arrogant and cruel."

"No one person has the right to withhold knowledge from another. No one is wise enough."

"I have no special virtue to make me resent him. One must have strength in order to judge the weakness of others. I am not so mighty."

"Power is power. Its uses are in the hands of the user."

"War puts burdens on people without caring whether they are ready for them or not."

"Do not hurt where holding is enough; do not wound where hurting is enough; do not maim where wounding is enough; and kill not where maiming is enough; the greatest warrior is he who does not need to kill."

"I would say that happiness lies in serving the Land. And I would say that there is no happiness in times of war."

"It may be that hope misleads. But hate—hate corrupts. I have been too quick to hate. I become like what I abhor."

"Don’t talk like a damned mystic. Say something I can understand."

"All you need to avoid despair is irremediable stupidity or unlimited stubbornness."

"He smiled because he was alive."

"“I’ll tell you what it is. It’s a goddam miracle, that’s what it is.” “Come, now,” the older man murmured. “I don’t believe in miracles—neither do you.”"

"Do not be too quick to judge the makers of worlds. Will you ever write a story for which no character will have caused to reproach you?"

"The answer to death was to make use of it rather than fall victim to it—master it by making it serve his goals, beliefs. This was not a good answer. But it was the only answer he had."

"“We will soon know.” “Yes, indeed,” Covenant muttered. “Only I hate surprises. You never know when one of them is going to ruin your life.”"

"Verily, wisdom is like hunger. Perhaps it is a very fine thing—but who would willingly partake of it?"

"“Are you wise, Unbeliever?” “Who knows? If I am—wisdom is overrated.”"

"In war men pass like shadows that stain the grass, Leaving their lives upon the green: While Earth bewails the crimson sheen, Men’s dreams and stars and whispers all helpless pass."

"“One word more,” Foul said, “a final caution: Do not forget whom to fear at the last. I have had to be content with killing and torment. But now my plans are laid, and I have begun. I shall not rest until I have eradicated hope from the Earth. Think on that, and be dismayed!”"

"“That was a joke. Or a metaphor.” Covenant made another effort to turn his sarcasm into humor. “I can never tell the difference.”"

"Dreams—never forgive."

"Ah, it is hard to take pride in human history."

"“Go to hell,” Covenant mumbled. “Don’t you ever sleep?” “The Bloodguard do not sleep.” “What?” “No Bloodguard has slept since the Haruchai swore their Vow.” With an effort, Covenant pulled himself into a sitting position. He peered blearily at Bannor for a moment, then muttered, “You’re already in hell.”"

"“We have searched the seas, and have waited for the omens to come to pass.” Foamfollower paused to look thoughtfully at Covenant, then went on: “Ah, my Lords, omening is curious. So much is said—and so little made clear.”"

"I admit the desire. But do not tempt me. Power has a way of revenging itself upon its usurpers."

"A good laugh, Covenant sighed morosely. Did I do a whole life’s laughing in that little time?"

"Foamfollower’s question caught him wandering. “Are you a storyteller, Thomas Covenant?” Absently, he replied, “I was, once.” “And you gave it up? Ah, that is as sad a tale in three words as any you might have told me. But a life without a tale is like a sea without salt. How do you live?”… “I live.” “Another?” Foamfollower returned. “In two words, a story sadder than the first. Say no more—with one word you will make me weep.”"

"“Why? Why do you trust me?” The Hirebrand’s eyes gleamed as if he were on the verge of tears, but he was smiling as he said, “You are a man who knows the value of beauty.”"

"In accepting a gift you honor the giver."

"It was clear to all there gathered that power is a dreadful thing, and that knowledge of power dims the seeing of the wise."

"King Christian X, king of Denmark, used to ride through the streets of Denmark on his horse and wave to the people of Denmark. A German soldier said to a boy; "Where is his body guard?", and the boy said "All of Denmark is his bodyguard". This is reportedly true."

"Why Are You Lying?"

""Now, I've been laughed at for my notions, sir, and I've been talked to. They an't pop'lar, and they an't common; but I stuck to 'em, sir; I've stuck to 'em, and realized well on 'em; yes, sir, they have paid their passage, I may say," and the trader laughed at his joke. There was something so piquant and original in these elucidations of humanity, that Mr. Shelby could not help laughing in company. Perhaps you laugh too, dear reader; but you know humanity comes out in a variety of strange forms now-a-days, and there is no end to the odd things that humane people will say and do."

"The novel has enormous power. Uncle Tom's Cabin may be a tearjerker, but it succeeds. Many readers find their eyes filling up as Eliza climbs up the Ohio riverbank, or George Shelby pledges to do "what one man can" to fight slavery. Stowe wanted to convince people that slavery was wrong, to engage their emotions. Her overheated style accomplishes that, perhaps better than more controlled writing would have been able to."

"The realm of fiction yet remains undisturbed by the Afro-Americans as a positive factor in a permanent way. This is much to be regretted, because he occupies so large a position, as a negative force. With slavery for a subject, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe gave America its strongest work of fiction, but the Afro-American there represented, though true in its delineation to the life it represented, does not represent the Afro-American of to-day. Our best literary friends have failed to do it, so ineradicable is prejudice; it is not in their power to understand that the Afro-American is a man with all the attributes of manhood. They have viewed us with a white man’s glasses so long, seeing only the ignorant and humble side, there seems no other perspective for them. Thus it is that to the world at large the conviction is widespread that we are a menial, servile, happy-go-lucky race, given to petty thievery or humble, forgiving and submissive, as was “Uncle Tom.” The literature of the day has so portrayed us. The greatest [claim] to literary merit of the new corps of Southern writers is their skill in portraying the plantation and servant side of race character by the aid of negro dialect."

"Anyone can see that to write Uncle Tom's Cabin on the knee in the kitchen, with constant calls to cooking and other details of housework to punctuate the paragraphs, was a more difficult achievement than to write it at leisure in a quiet room."

""Uncle Tom's Cabin" came from the heart rather than the head. It was an outburst of deep feeling, a cry in the darkness. The writer no more thought of style or literary excellence than the mother who rushes into the street and cries for help to save her children from a burning house thinks of the teachings of the rhetorician or the elocutionist."

"The pure and worthy Mrs. Stowe is one we all are proud to know As mother, wife, and authoress— Thank God, I am content with less!"

"As our President said, we have in our army such minds as Spencer, and Mill, and I would add Buckle, and many others; and they are diffusing light, intelligence and civilization, and advocating the right. We have women also. We have Frances P. Cobbe; whose name I speak with pride and rejoicing; and in the literary world we have Charlotte Bronte, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and many others, who are consecrating their talents to the great cause of womanhood, and freedom, and right."

"Why is it that Harriet Beecher Stowe has had such success throughout the wide world? Because her work reaches the sense of right in the universal human heart."

"So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!"

"Biographies of eminent women designed to appeal to literate women readers became a popular genre in the 19th century in England and in other European countries.In the United States this genre is represented by a two-volume History of Women by Lydia Maria Child...Another example of the genre is a selection of biographies by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Woman in Sacred History: A Series of Sketches Drawn from Scriptural, Historical and Legendary Sources which uses the Old and the New Testament as its source."

"Harriet Beecher, whose glowing pen/Corroded the chains of fettered men."

"Uncle Tom's Cabin is a very bad novel, having, in its self-righteous, virtuous sentimentality, much in common with Little Women. Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel; the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent inhumanity, the mask of cruelty. Uncle Tom's Cabin-like its multitudinous, hard-boiled descendants-is a catalogue of violence. This is explained by the nature of Mrs. Stowe's subject matter, her laudable determination to flinch from nothing in presenting the complete picture; an explanation which falters only if we pause to ask whether or not her picture is indeed complete; and what constriction or failure of perception forced her to so depend on the description of brutality-unmotivated, senseless-and to leave unanswered and unnoticed the only important question: what it was, after all, that moved her people to such deeds. But this, let us say, was beyond Mrs. Stowe's powers; she was not so much a novelist as an impassioned pamphleteer; her book was not intended to do anything more than prove that slavery was wrong; was, in fact, perfectly horrible. This makes material for a pamphlet but it is hardly enough for a novel; and the only question left to ask is why we are bound still within the same constriction. How is it that we are so loath to make a further journey than that made by Mrs. Stowe, to discover and reveal something a little closer to the truth?...Bigger (from Native Son by Richard Wright) is Uncle Tom's descendant, flesh of his flesh, so exactly opposite a portrait that, when the books are placed together, it seems that the contemporary Negro novelist and the dead New England woman are locked together in a deadly, timeless battle; the one uttering merciless exhortations, the other shouting curses."

"Abolitionist writer Thomas Wentworth Higginson said of its author: "To have written at once the most powerful and contemporaneous fiction, and the most efficient antislavery tract is a double triumph in literature and philosophy to which this country has heretofore seen no parallel.""