Kate Willis > Kate's Quotes

“But if a man truly loved you, he would see the beauty that lies much deeper than those scars.”
― Sarah Holman, Waltz into the Waves: A Cinderella Story

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“Slartibartfast's study was a total mess, like the results of an explosion in a public library.”
― Douglas Adams

“And I write novels!" chimed in the other cop. "Though I haven't had any of them published yet, so I better warn you, I'm in a meeeean mood!”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.”
― Mark Twain

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations

“Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.”
― Mark Twain

“Write what you know.”
― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth.... Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words and they backhand them across the net.”
― E.B. White

“Omit needless words.”
― William Strunk Jr., The Elements of Style; How to Speak and Write Correctly

“The gospel gives me hope, and hope is not a language the dark voices understand.”
― Andrew Peterson

“He wondered what book he might be reading when he finally breathed his last, and determined to grab a good one as soon as he sensed the end coming so that whoever discovered him would know he had a good taste in literature.”
― Andrew Peterson

“Where do you get the inspiration for your books?

I tell myself I can't have another cup of coffee till I've thought of an idea.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“A book comes and says, 'Write me.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Story always tells us more than the mere words, and that is why we love to write it, and to read it.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular; it is why he does it. The motive is everything. Let a man sanctify the Lord God in his heart and he can thereafter do no common act. All he does is good and acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For such a man, living itself will be sacramental and the whole world a sanctuary. His entire life will be a priestly ministration. As he performs his never-so-simple task, he will hear the voice of the seraphim saying, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of the hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

“I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Where do you think my new novel is? In the waste basket. I can see myself that it's no good on earth, and when a loving author realizes this, what would be the judgment of a critical public?”
― Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

“I saw a street car conductor today with one brown eye and one blue. Wouldn't he make a nice villain for a detective story?”
― Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

“Eleven pages— this is a letter! Have courage. I'm going to stop.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

“I came up with a pen and tablet hoping to write an immortal short story, but I've been having a dreadful time with my heroine— I CAN'T make her behave as I want her to behave; so I've abandoned her for the moment, and am writing to you.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

“This new book is going to get itself finished— and published! You see if it doesn't.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

“Isn't it fun to work— or don't you ever do it? It's especially fun when your kind of work is the thing you'd rather do more than anything else in the world. I've been writing as fast as my pen would go every day this summer, and my only quarrel with life is that the days aren't long enough to write all the beautiful and valuable and entertaining thoughts I'm thinking. I've finished the second draft of my book and am going to begin the third tomorrow morning at half-past seven. It's the sweetest book you ever saw— it is, truly. I think of nothing else. I can barely wait in the morning to dress and eat before beginning; then I write and write and write till suddenly I'm so tired that I'm limp all over.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

“Forgive me for being so ordinary while claiming to know so extraordinary a God.”
― Jim Elliot

“The Christian shoemaker does his duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.”
― Martin Luther

“I do not think that you can be changing the end of a song or a story like that, as though it were quite separate from the rest. I think the end of a story is part of it from the beginning.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff