#novels

Novels institutionalize the ruse of eros. It becomes a narrative texture of sustained incongruence, emotional and cognitive. It permits the reader to stand in triangular relation to the characters in the story and reach into the text after the objects of their desire, sharing their longing but also detached from it, seeing their view of reality but also its mistakenness. It is almost like being in love. ↗

— Anne Carson

#desire #eros #eros-the-bittersweet #literature #novels

The romance genre is the only genre where readers are guaranteed novels that place the heroine at the heart of the story. These are books that celebrate women's heroic virtues and values: courage, honor, determination and a belief in the healing power of love. ↗

— Jayne Ann Krentz

#courage

My death granted immortality. With one look, I knew he’d be my undoing…” Forgotten, book #1 of the Fate Trilogy ↗

— Sarah J. Pepper

#fate #god #immortal #kiss #love

Spilling a Secret What its size, will have varying consequences. It’s not possible to predict what will happen if you open the gunnysack, let the cat escape. A liberated feline might purr on your lap, or it might scratch your eyes out. You can’t tell until you loosen the knot. Do you chance losing a friendship, if that friend’s well-being will only be preserved by betraying sworn-to silence trust? Once the seam is ripped, can it be mended again? And if that proves impossible, will you be okay when it all falls to pieces? ↗

— Ellen Hopkins

#chick-lit #contemporary #novels #poetry #spilling-a-secret

His gaze slid over me like a veil of fire. He could ignite my deepest desires with a single glance. I decided right then and there no more reading romance novels by candelight. ↗

— Darynda Jones

#romance-novels #humor

I am ever a gentle maiden," she shouted. "Damn if I'm not. ↗

— Julie Garwood

#humor #julie-garwood #romance-novels #humor

Formerly I believed books were made like this: a poet came, lightly opened his lips, and the inspired fool burst into song – if you please! But it seems, before they can launch a song, poets must tramp for days with callused feet, and the sluggish fish of the imagination flounders softly in the slush of the heart. And while, with twittering rhymes, they boil a broth of loves and nightingales, the tongueless street merely writhes for lack of something to shout or say ↗

— Vladimir Mayakovsky

#imagination #inspiration #novels #writing #imagination

You don't read Gatsby, I said, to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and fidelity and marriage are. A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil. ↗

— Azar Nafisi

#individuality #insight #issues #learning #life

A Dickens character to me is a theatrical projection of a character. Not that it isn't real. It's real, but in that removed sense. But Sherlock Holmes is simply there. I would be astonished if I went to 221 1/2 B Baker Street and didn't find him." [An Invitation to Learning, January 1942] ↗

— Rex Stout

#dickens #larger-than-life #novels #presence #realism

I will keep my bulk. All of it, if ye dinna mind. I will have need of it, thank ye." Derrick ↗

— Billi Jean

#romance-novels #werewolves-paranormal-romance #witches #werewolves