100 Quotes from Novels That will Touch Your Heart

''As Estha stirred the thick jam he thought Two Thoughts and the Two Thoughts he thought were these:
a) Anything can happen to anyone.
and
b) It is best to be prepared.''
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things



“There is no more usual basis of union than a mutual misunderstanding”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady



“And often enough, when we think we are protecting ourselves, we are struggling against our rescuer.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“The truth has become an insult.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun



“If you don’t try at anything, you can’t fail… it takes back bone to lead the life you want”
― Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road



“Every now and then, quite unintentionally, someone taught you something about yourself.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement



“Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment



“Any doctor will do in an emergency.”
― Cao Xueqin, The Warning Voice

“ It is wise to conceal the past even if there is nothing to conceal. A man's power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguessed-at expression of his face. It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall




“The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?”
― George Orwell, 1984




 “Do you know what the definition of insane is? Yes. It’s the inability to relate to another human being. It’s the inability to love.”
― Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road




“And though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“If you don't like it, alter it, and if you can't alter it, put up with it.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers



“The gift blesses the giver.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall



‘’If a man hasn't what's necessary to make a woman love him, it's his fault, not hers.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil



‘’Burdens are for shoulders strong enough to carry them.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind



“It's not a man's working hours that is important, it is how he spends his leisure time.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“A hundred suspicions don't make a proof.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment



Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.”
― Zadie Smith, White Teeth



“You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man. Do you hear me?” Aunty Ifeka said. “Your life belongs to you and you alone.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun




‘’I knew you were silly and frivolous and empty-headed. But I loved you. I knew that your aims and ideals were vulgar and commonplace. But I loved you. I knew that you were second-rate. But I loved you. It's comic when I think how hard I tried to be amused by the things that amused you and how anxious I was to hide from you that I wasn't ignorant and vulgar and scandal-mongering and stupid. I knew how frightened you were of intelligence and I did everything I could to make you think me as big a fool as the rest of the men you knew. I knew that you'd only married me for convenience. I loved you so much, I didn't care.’’
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil




“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”
― George Orwell, 1984

‘’Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect. We take what we get and are thankful it's no worse than it is.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind



“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.”
― George Orwell, 1984



“It's not my fate to give up--I know it can't be.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady




“You must not pay too much attention to opinions. The written word is unalterable, and opinions are often only an expression of despair.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial




“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Even iron sometimes melts.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady



“The problem was money and the indignities of life without it. Every stroller, cell phone, Yankees cap, and SUV he saw was a torment. He wasn't covetous, he wasn't envious. But without money he was hardly a man.”
― Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections

“It's because I chatter that I do nothing. Or perhaps it is that I chatter because I do nothing.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment



“There is no generosity without sacrifice.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“What we call the present is given shape by an accumulation of the past.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84



“Sometimes glass glitters more than diamonds because it has more to prove.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth



“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment



“I don't make myself disagreeable; it is you who find me so. Disagreeable is a word that describes your feelings and not my actions.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead



“When you're sixteen a body like this is free; when you're forty it's a full-time occupation.”
― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao



“Hard work, is the best medicine yet devised for all the ills of man- and of woman.”
― Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road



“The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment



“I think sometimes nothing is better than something. I mean, I’d rather have nothing than let this guy use me like his bitch.”
― Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

“Hatred is like a long, dark shadow. Not even the person it falls upon knows where it comes from, in most cases. It is like a two-edged sword. When you cut the other person, you cut yourself. The more violently you hack at the other person, the more violently you hack at yourself. It can often be fatal. But it is not easy to dispose of. Please be careful, Mr.Okada. It is very dangerous. Once it has taken root in your heart, hatred is the most difficult think in the world to shake off.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle




“No remedy but love Can make the lovesick well; Only the hand that tied the knot Can loose the tiger’s bell.”
― Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone: The Debt of Tears




‘’She alone had been blind to his merit. Why? Because he loved her and she did not love him. What was it in the human heart that made you despise a man because he loved you?”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil



“There is nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery. If there is a hundredth of a fraction of a false note to candor, it immediately produces dissonance, and as a result, exposure. But in flattery, even if everything is false down to the last note, it is still pleasant, and people will listen not without pleasure; with coarse pleasure, perhaps, but pleasure nevertheless. ”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Without privacy there was no point in being an individual.”
― Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections



“I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84



“The whole question here is: am I a monster, or a victim myself?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment




“Catch several hares and you won't catch one.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment 

“The brain works fast when it thinks it’s about to be cut in half.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth



“A man will sometimes suffer half an hour of mortal fear with a robber, but once the knife is finally at his throat, even fear vanishes.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment




“We go on our hands and knees and crawl our way towards the truth”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement



“No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.”
― Haruki Murakami

 “Character assassination. What a wonderful idea. Ordinary assassination only works once, but this one works every day.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth




“We must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us, my dear. We must learn to act the play out. We must live misfortune down, Trot!”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield




“Briony began to understand the chasm that lay between an idea and its execution”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.”
― George Orwell, 1984



“But it is one thing to like defiance, and another thing to like its consequences.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life




“Still, being able to feel pain was good, he thought. It's when you can't even feel pain anymore that you're in real trouble.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage



“Vengeance is like a fire. The more it devours, the hungrier it gets.”
― J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace

“Parents are supposed to pass down physical traits to their children, but it’s my belief that all sorts of other things get passed down, too: motifs, scenarios, even fates.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex



“Sometimes I get real lonely sleeping with you.”
― Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase



“This is what divorce is: taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love.”
― Zadie Smith, White Teeth



“When your uncle first married me, I worried because I thought those women outside would come and displace me from my home. I now know that nothing he does will make my life change. My life will only change if I want it to change.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun

“If you could figure out how to live with family then you'd gone a long way toward finding your peace.”
― Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk



“He was not living his life; life was living him”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun



“Society may not need you, strictly speaking, but some sort of use can usually be found.”
― Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk



“I drink because I wish to multiply my sufferings.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment 



“Love is holy because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“We have facts,’ they say. But facts are not everything—at least half the business lies in how you interpret them!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment



“But a lot of the time that’s how it works, life gets so dark until we think all the light’s gone out of us. But it’s there, it’s always there. If we just open the door a crack the light comes pouring in.”
― Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk




“We have the idea that our hearts, once broken, scar over with an indestructible tissue that prevents their ever breaking again in quite the same place...”
― Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay




“It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“She would be a new person, she vowed. They said no matter how far a mule travels it can never come back a horse, but she would show them all.”
― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao




“The thoughts he put in her head. Someone should’ve arrested him for it.”
― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao



“Every day is a lie. But you are dying. That is not a lie. ”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road



“It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Do you understand, sir, do you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment



“Know that in this world there's somebody who will always love you.”
― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao



“His suppressed grief becomes anger. But what can he do with anger? It must also be suppressed.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall



“Because anything you can dream (he put his hand up) you can be.”
― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“If you don't try, nothing ever changes.”
― Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend



“... that the past is one lie, and the memory has no returning, becouse every old spring is beyond retrieve, and even the craziest and most persistent love is just a temporary truth...”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude



“Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude



“If you break little promises, you'll break big ones.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road



“Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment. ”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood



“Children don’t know the meaning of yesterday, of the day before yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this, now: the street is this, the doorway is this, the stairs are this, this is Mamma, this is Papa, this is the day, this the night.”
― Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend

“...time was not passing...it was turning in a circle...”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude




“Being dead's only a problem if you know you're dead, which you never do because you're dead!”
― Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections



“Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

“If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore



“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you…. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step.

And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. .

And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“In a sense, I'm the one who ruined me: I did it myself.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84



“I'm a very ordinary human being; I just happen to like reading books.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84



 “He wanted pure compliments, just as he wanted unconditional love.”
― Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty



“what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“Grief was the celebration of love, those who could feel real grief were lucky to have loved.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun




“We stood silent. After a moment I said, "Real Geniuses never think they're geniuses."
"Who says?"
"Me."
"Because why?"
"Because genius is nine-tenths perspiration. Haven't you ever heard that? As soon as you think you're a genius, you slack off. You think everything you do is so great and everything.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex




“It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment



“Men outlive their love, but they don’t outlive the consequences of their recklessness.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

‘’I loved something I made up”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind



‘’There is no cruelty greater than a woman's to a man who loves her and whom she does not love; she has no kindness then, no tolerance even, she has only an insane irritation.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence




‘’In the first place it's not true that people improve as you know them better: they don't. That's why one should only have acquaintances and never make friends. An acquaintance shows you only the best of himself, he's considerate and polite, he conceals his defects behind a mask of social convention; but we grow so intimate with him that he throws the mask aside, get to know him so well that he doesn't trouble any longer to pretend; then you'll discover a being of such meanness, of such trivial nature, of such weakness, of such corruption, that you'd be aghast if you didn't realize that that was his nature and it was just as stupid to condemn him as to condemn the wolf because he ravens or the cobra because he strikes.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Christmas Holiday