A Quote by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Of course, in a novel, people's hearts break, and they die and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Quote Topics

Break Bright Convenient Course Die Dies End Hearts Life Makes Novel People Real Real Life Story Us Very

Quote Author

Harriet Beecher Stowe
American - Author
June 14, 1811 - July 1, 1896

You know, everybody dies. My parents died. Your father died. Everybody dies. I'm going to die too. So will you. The thing is, to have a life before we die. It can be a real adventure having a life

John Irving

Don't die for the country! Don't die for the love! Don't die for anything! Always choose life! Under every circumstance this is your real duty in life!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

Who Honors those we love for the very life we live? Who sends monsters to kill us...and at the same time sings that we'll never die? Who teaches us what's real...and how to laugh at lies? Who decides why we live and what we'll die to defend? Who chains us...and who holds the key that can set us free? It's you. You have all the weapons you need. Now fight!

Zack Snyder

It has long been a tradition among novel writers that a book must end by everybody getting just what they wanted, or if the conventional happy ending was impossible, then it must be a tragedy in which one or both should die. In real life very few of us get what we want, our tragedies don't kill us, but we go on living them year after year, carrying them with us like a scar on an old wound.

Willa Cather

In any man who dies there dies with him his first snow and kiss and fight... Not people die but worlds die in them.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko

All men die. You may say: 'Is that encouraging?' Surely yes, for when a man dies, his blunders, which are of the form, all die with him, but the things in him that are part of the life never die, although the form be broken.

Annie Besant

If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation. If I got any comfort as I set out on my first story, it was that in nearly every story, the protagonist is transformed. He's a jerk at the beginning and nice at the end, or a coward at the beginning and brave at the end. If the character doesn't change, the story hasn't happened yet. And if story is derived from real life, if story is just condensed version of life then life itself may be designed to change us so that we evolve from one kind of person to another.

Donald Miller

Of this I am certain, that no one has ever died who was not destined to die some time. Now the end of life puts the longest life on a par with the shortest... And of what consequence is it what kind of death puts an end to life, since he who has died once is not forced to go through the same ordeal a second time? They, then, who are destined to die, need not be careful to inquire what death they are to die, but into what place death will usher them.

Saint Augustine

In real life, things don't all end at the nice same place. To keep the story real, there has to be kind of a ragged edge at the end of a novel.

Robin Hobb

Many people believe that our lives end not when we die but when the very last person who knew us dies. Memory is part of it, yes, but I think it's much more than memory.

Douglas Hofstadter

Everyone dies whether one is good in their lifetime or evil in their lifetime. So virtue has no payback. Life is meaningless. When you die, you die!

Gerry Lindgren

The world will die, but I shall not die.If God dies, then I will die;If he does not die, then why should I die?

Kabir

We can't have any weak or silly. Life is real again, and the useless and cumbersome and mischievous have to die. They ought to die. They ought to be willing to die. It's a sort of disloyalty, after all, to live and taint the race.

H. G. Wells

I do not share the pessimism of the age about the novel. They are one of our greatest spiritual, aesthetic and intellectual inventions. As a species it is story that distinguishes us, and one of the supreme expressions of story is the novel. Novels are not content. Nor are they are a mirror to life or an explanation of life or a guide to life. Novels are life, or they are nothing.