Great Writing Quotes

“There are books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story... don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words--the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers who won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.”
― Stephen King

“I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down."

[Letter to J. Beauchamp Jones, August 8, 1839]”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe

“In truly good writing no matter how many times you read it you do not know how it is done. That is beacause there is a mystery in all great writing and that mystery does not dis-sect out. It continues and it is always valid. Each time you re-read you see or learn something new.”
― Ernest Hemingway , On Writing

“Avril had the sense they say comes with your last moments; not so much that she saw her life flashing before her eyes, but more that she felt it behind her, all its pent-up force propelling her into whatever would happen next.”
― Mick Herron, Clown Town

“... and Louisa watched another car arriving, this one as unmarked as the cop cars, but more so.”
― Mick Herron, Clown Town

“There is a topic being left unaddressed, and Belwether is starting to feel his way around its edges, like a man sizing up a hedge, clippers in hand. To such a man, the existence of an article like a microcassette tape, contents unknown, might represent a challenge: Is this to be incorporated into the topiary, or clipped away, bagged and despatched? Soon enough, he feels, the answer will make itself known.”
― Mick Herron, Clown Town

“That spike of terror went through me again. He was like a raptor, not cruel, not good or evil, only and utterly what he was. The purity of it, unbreakable, was beyond anything I could imagine.”
― Tana French, The Witch Elm

“Before I could get my bearings he was on top of me and shoving my face down into the dirt.

He was bigger and ten times stronger than me. Earth pressed on my eyelids, earth filled my mouth. I couldn’t breathe.

I almost went with it. I almost relaxed all my aching muscles and let him guide me down, among last year’s leaves and small winter-dreaming creatures, between long-lost treasures and tiny curled bones, into the dark earth.”
― Tana French, The Witch Elm

“We should…” Dawes chewed the inside of her cheek as if she’d stored words there for winter. “We should be prepared for … something worse.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Hell Bent

“You’ve been in my head now,” she said. “Did you get a look at the things I did to survive this life?”

“Glimpses,” he admitted. A string of bleak moments, a deep and desperate ocean, Hellie shining like a golden coin, her grandmother glowing like a banked ember, her mother … a disaster, a cloud, a tangle of frayed yarn, a mess of pity and longing and anger and love.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Hell Bent

“Damn, Easy,” the intrepid sideman said. “Trouble got your name tattooed on the inside’a his eyelids. He be studyin’ you in his sleep.”
― Walter Mosley, Charcoal Joe

“This was the place that shaped Arthur, this backwater, where the deep British past persisted the way scraps of winter snow last late into the spring in the shadows of trees and gullies.”
― Lev Grossman, The Bright Sword

“Hirsch followed Erica Woodhead back to her mother-in-law’s house, learned that Audrey McRae knew nothing about any shotgun, said goodbye to Sergeant Brandl and returned to Tiverton feeling crabbed and carping, full of gaps and absences.”
― Garry Disher, Mischance Creek

“He found her seated on her veranda steps, picking grass seeds out of a pair of old khaki army socks. About sixty, with the kind of pale skin that should never see the sun, she wore shorts, a sleeveless work shirt and fraying white sand-shoes. A solid figure, concentrating hard, tugging at and flicking away the seeds with a terrible fixedness, sometimes peering at them through her glasses, sometimes over them, as if the seeds swam in her vision either way.”
― Garry Disher

“Things get worse. When Mum is drugged and sad and singing tunes from the Roger Whittaker album every night, that is one thing. It is a contained, soggy madness, which does little more than humidify the dry, unspoken grief we all feel. But then the outside world starts to join in and has a nervous breakdown all its own, so that it starts to get hard for me to know where Mum’s madness ends and the world’s madness begins. It’s like being on a roundabout, spinning too fast. If I look inward, at my feet, or at my hands clutching the red-painted bar, I can see clearly, if narrowly, where I am in spite of a sick feeling in my stomach and a fear of looking up. But when I pluck up the courage to look up, the world is a terrifying, unhinged blur and I cannot determine whether it is me, or the world, that has come off its axis.”
― Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

“The flowers for the wedding have been done by a drunken homosexual from the Copperbelt. His flower arrangements, his way of life, his entire philosophy, everything about the man is centered upon the theme of disguise. My wedding bouquet is made from wild African weeds, not flowers. The stagnant green pool is hidden with brightly colored balloons. White building sand covers the cow and horse shit in the paddock where Charlie and I exchange vows. The trees (bare-limbed in midwinter) are festooned with crepe-paper-covered hula hoops.

Dad puts all the hula hoops over his body, one on top of the other. He says, “You miserable buggers want light. I bring you the Timothy Donald Fuller Electricity Supply Commission.” He lights a match and sets himself on fire.

Mum, singing and arms raised in triumph, shouts, “Olé!”

Dad is extinguished with a bottle of champagne by an alert, alarmed American guest.

I couldn’t be more thoroughly married.”
― Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

“He always loved Donna’s smile, quick and complete, sending every line of her face flying upwards.”
― Tana French, The Searcher

“He never for a minute expected Trey’s father to come home. Even made up entirely of anecdotes, Johnny Reddy has always struck Cal as a type he’s encountered before: the guy who operates by sauntering into a new place, announcing himself as whatever seems likely to come in handy, and seeing how much he can get out of that costume before it wears too thin to cover him up any longer. Cal can’t think of a good reason why he might want to come back here, the one place where he can’t announce himself as anything other than what he is.”
― Tana French, The Hunter

“Trey goes cold straight through with outrage. He said it like he was doing her a favor. He had no right anywhere near Cal. She feels like he stuck his hand in her mouth.”
― Tana French, The Hunter

“Cal waits. He’s had squirrelly little conversations like this with squirrelly little fucks like this before, hundreds of times: two-layer conversations where everyone knows what’s going on, and everyone knows that everyone knows, but they all have to keep playing dumb for the squirrelly little fuck’s convenience. The wasted energy always irritated him, but at least back then he was getting paid for it.”
― Tana French, The Hunter

“Lena has only ever known Cal to be gentle, but she’s not under the illusion that he has no other side. She doesn’t underestimate his anger. She can almost smell it off him, like heat off metal.”
― Tana French, The Hunter

“They give the chair more care and delicacy than it really deserves, going back three times over the turning of the leg, sanding it finer and finer till a baby could suck on it. Mostly they work in silence. Summer air wanders in and out of the window, bringing the smells of silage and clover, picking up sawdust motes and twirling them idly in the wide bars of sunlight. When the sun moves off the window and the heat starts to mellow towards dinnertime, Trey dusts off her outgrown jeans and goes home.”
― Tana French, The Hunter

“Tell Ed that I am grateful for his praise. Someone else, I would think it was just flattery, because he wants something.” He offered a thin smile, which rippled his lips like a shark’s fin breaking water.”
― David Ignatius, Body of Lies

“Murder is different. Even a hint of it shakes a place to the bone, setting in motion things that can’t be predicted or controlled. Suicide requires nothing but grief, which is hard enough; murder makes demands.”
― Tana French, The Keeper

“Eugene favors his mama more than his daddy: he’s middle height and narrow all over, with dark hair and a face that’s good-looking as long as you get it at the right angle and don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.”
― Tana French, The Keeper

“Eugene follows Tommy at a snappy pace, picking up his feet like a city boy. Eugene doesn’t have exactly the demeanor Cal would expect from someone in his circumstances. The kid looks like he’s grieving hard, all right—he’s lost weight, and there are purple bags under his eyes—but what he mainly looks is tense and irked, like he considers the entire situation utterly unacceptable. He has the air of a man about to file an elaborate grievance with HR.”
― Tana French, The Keeper

“Mrs. Duggan has filled her sitting room to the brim with herself. Every wall is crowded with ornate brown furniture stuffed with painted porcelain, silver frames, Sacred Heart statuettes; the carpet and the curtains are a tumult of ferocious purple flowers. The side table at her elbow is cluttered with small things, pear drops and dominoes and earrings, all of them wearing the furtively sinister air of amulets that could jinx your week if they found their way into your pocket. Even the air, hot and dry, seethes with the traces of cigarette ash and the faint, high whistling of the gas fire. At the heart of it all is Mrs. Duggan, vast and formless in a magenta dress coated with swirls of tiny magenta beads, like one of those underwater creatures that lie wide-mouthed on the seabed waiting to receive anyone and anything that comes their way.”
― Tana French, The Keeper

“My daddy wasn’t a prick,” Francie points out.
“Ah, he was,” Senan says.

“Sometimes, only. As a hobby. Not as a fuckin’ career.”
― Tana French, The Keeper

“Cal dims the overhead light, to bring out the flicker of the fire. He wants the room to feel cozy, homey. Instead it takes on a contracted, huddled air, like some attack has brought down the electricity and left them cut off, with nothing to do but endure till the next thing happens.”
― Tana French, The Keeper

“Sheila smiles. Her smile still has an out-of-practice look to it, like she’s doing something risky.”
― Tana French, The Keeper