Melanie Pieper

“When the reader has stopped to wonder at your delamificatious vocabulary, or, worse, when the reader has stopped because the word you've used has no more meaning to him than a random ptliijnbvc of letters, the reader is not involved in your story. ... Generally, saying 'edifice' instead of 'building' doesn't tell your reader anything about the building; it tells the reader that you know that word edifice.”
― Howard Mittelmark, How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them—A Misstep-by-Misstep Guide

“Tea is, in fact, a marvelous drink. To those who spurn it on the grounds of insomnia, I say that it’s better to be deprived of sleep than of tea.”
― Natsume Sōseki, The Three-Cornered World

“There are some things in this world you can never get back... There's no reclaiming that piece of the past. Don't you think it'd be better to abandon it completely and consider instead what you did wrong and learn from it?”
― Fuyumi Ono, The Twelve Kingdoms: Skies of Dawn

“Mr. Lynn gave her one of his considering looks. "People are strange," he said. "Usually they're much stranger than you think. Start from there and you'll never be unpleasantly surprised. Do you fancy doughnuts?”
― Diana Wynne Jones, Fire and Hemlock