Top 1200 Mystery Novels Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

The mystery which underlies the beauty of women is never raised above the reach of all expression until it has claimed kindred with the deeper mystery in our own souls.

I always wanted to write novels, even before I had read a lot of novels or had a very good idea of what they were.

We don't tend to ask where a lake comes from. It lies before us, contained and complete, tantalizing in its depth but not its origin. A river is a different kind of mystery, a mystery of distance and becoming, a mystery of source. Touch its fluent body and you touch far places. You touch a story that must end somewhere but cannot stop telling itself, a story that is always just beginning.

Poetry never loses its appeal. Sometimes its audience wanes and sometimes it swells like a wave. But the essential mystery of being human is always going to engage and compel us. We're involved in a mystery. Poetry uses words to put us in touch with that mystery. We're always going to need it.

There're no novels that I like to read so I write my own novels, and then I read them again, and it's the best thing.

At conventions, one of the standard questions I get is, 'Are you writing any new novels?' To which I used to respond, in my smart-[alec] fashion, 'No, I've decided to write only old novels.'

Do you write novels?" I said. "Novels, Lord no," she said. "I can't even stay married.

When I started reading George R.R. Martin's 'A Song of Ice and Fire' novels, it was the late 1990s and obsessing over fantasy novels was (if painful memory serves) a super-nerdy thing to do.

My novels are very much the same, as I think many people's novels are. No matter how hard I try to do otherwise, the books always wind up being "a group of strangers are thrown together by circumstance and form a society."

The novels were an escape from reality in the sense that we could marvel at their beauty and perfection. Curiously, the novels we escaped into led us finally to question and prod our own realities, about which we felt so helplessly speechless.

We live in an age of technology and science that demands proof, and yet we desire mystery. But when God gives us mystery, we seek to destroy it by gross indifference or childish reasoning.

There are many reasons I love novels with multiple narratives. In novels where the events are filtered through the consciousness of a single 'reliable' narrator, I often wonder, is this the whole story? What could be missing here?

Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don't say that you've wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.

I would like my novels to be read the way I read the novels I love.

We don't tend to write about disease in fiction - not just teen novels but all American novels - because it doesn't fit in with our idea of the heroic romantic epic. There is room only for sacrifice, heroism, war, politics and family struggle.

I don’t like to make strong statements. I want to write strong novels … I keep my deep radical things for my novels.

The philosopher aspires to explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light. Mystery, on the other hand, is demanded and pursued by the religious instinct; mystery constitutes the essence of worship.

After 7 years of marriage, I am sure of 2 things: First, never wallpaper together and second, you'll need 2 bathrooms . . . both for her. The rest is a mystery, but a mystery I love to be involved in.

Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.

The interesting thing about Bettie Page that I discovered was to leave the mystery. She always retained a little mystery. Let there be some unknowns.

From an early age, my favorite thing to read was novels. For years, when I was writing only nonfiction, still I was reading almost exclusively novels. It's weird to be producing something that you don't consume. It feels really alienating.

If there is no mystery, for the artist, to solve inside of his art, then there's no point in it....for me, every act of the art of solving a mystery.

I had wanted to write English crime novels based on the American hard-boiled style, and for the first two novels about Brixton, the critics didn't actually know I was Irish.

We are part of a mystery, a splendid mystery within which we must attempt to orient ourselves if we are to have a sense of our own nature.

You know, people call mystery novels or thrillers 'puzzles.' I never understood that, because when I buy a puzzle, I already know what it is. It's on the box. And even if I don't, if it's a 5,000-piece puzzle of the 'Mona Lisa', it's not like I put the last piece in and go, 'I had no idea it's the 'Mona Lisa'!'

The self is no mystery, the mystery is / That there is something for us to stand on

When I was working on a Victorian-era novel, to get in the mood, I read several historical novels set in approximately the same period and place, and really enjoyed the detective novels of John Dickson Carr.

I don't like to make strong statements. I want to write strong novels... I keep my deep, radical things for my novels.

Wisdom is not the understanding of mystery. Wisdom is accepting that mystery is beyond understanding. That's what makes it mystery.

I don't think of myself as a mystery or thriller writer, honestly. I am in awe of mystery writers and don't think I have what it takes to write such a book.

I read novels for entertainment rather than for edification, so I tend not to read the sort of novels that are said to illuminate the human condition.

The relationship between Victoria Ocampo and Tagore is something every Bengali has heard about and there is a mystery attached to it. This mystery is enough to attract an actor.

Most of the female 'superhero' role models of my childhood came from novels, and they rarely had powers. Take Dorothy, for example, from 'The Wizard of Oz;' or Laura Ingalls and her sisters in the 'Little House on the Prairie' novels.

Art is a mystery. A mystery is something immeasurable.

Writing a mystery is more difficult than other kinds of books because a mystery has a certain framework that must be superimposed over the story.

You know that thing people say, 'poetry is the hardest, stories are the second hardest, novels are the easiest?' I'm here to tell you that novels are the hardest. Writing a novel is unbelievably difficult. It's nightmarish.

The musical mystery is: How do you marry tuned percussion and voice? On a metaphorical level, everything that's really important - like the clouds, the sky and the earth - is a giant mystery.

...when you put on your shortest dress, please leave some mystery in it. That's the difference between a miniskirt and a ho-skirt. A ho-skirt shows your Frisbee. A miniskirt shows just enough to cause some mystery. What these young women lack is mystery.

I like to know the places I write about. I feel like it helps me ground the novel. My novels are 'realistic novels,' but they can also be fantastical, so it's nice to have a setting that grounds them a little bit.

To explain away the mystery of a great painting - if such a feat were possible - would do irreparable harm... If there is no mystery, then there is no poetry, the quality I value above all else in art.

You could say that all novels are spy novels and all novelists are spy masters.

Mystics exult in mystery and want it to stay mysterious. Scientists exult in mystery for a different reason: It gives them something to do.

Apparently, the city of Delhi is a 'character' in my novels. I'd argue that it's a ... city... in my novels.

The difference does not lie in the things that news does that novels do not do, but in the things that novels do that news cannot do. In other words, this basic technique of news - just one among many - is something a novel can use, but a novel can deploy a multitude of other techniques also. Novels are not bound by the rules of reportage. Far from it. They're predicated on delivering experience.

That's what everyone said attracted them to Lantana - I call it an adult mystery, because it's not a thriller in the sense of that other way, but it is a mystery.

Relationship is a pervading and changing mystery... brutal or lovely, the mystery waits for people wherever they go, whatever extreme they run to.

As writers, we are exploring the mystery, the mystery of existence.

You do not need to belong to the cat for a long time to realize the main thing that cats like to do is to wrap theirselves up in mystery, perhaps only except for a hobby of jumbling up everything that is in order. And if the cat can, and usually so, make a great mystery of where it was when you were searching for it even if a moment ago it was sitting by your side, do not have any doubts: its ancestors had a great pleasure to surround its origin by mystery.

There's one massive problem with coming from writing novels into screenplays that I've discovered over the years, which is that you've got too much facility on the page. In novels, you can persuade people of things that work that don't really work.

I think my mystery, or any person's mystery, is the thing that makes them most interesting. I try to be as conscious as possible of keeping that alive.

A miniskirt shows just enough to cause some mystery. What these young women lack is mystery so the old women have to have it.

Man is manifestly not the measure of all things. This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only miracle worthy of the name.

In novels, and American novels in particular, it's not just about redemption, it's about forward movement and healing oneself. Americans are very big on getting better.

I can only write one novel at a time. The author of the Perry Mason novels, Erle Stanley Gardner, often worked on four novels simultaneously, and produced a million words a year. I'm envious.

The mystery in how little we know of other people is no greater than the mystery of how much, Laurel thought.

The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.

I think people try so hard to learn everything that they miss all the wonderful essentials. There is so much mystery in life that you should leave a mystery.

I'm not not a fan of graphic novels, but it's not like one of my pastimes, reading graphic novels.

I'd probably still be a financial journalist now if it weren't for writing novels. Mmm. Fun! I'm much happier writing novels!

Mystery has great power. In the many years I have worked with people with cancer, I have seen Mystery comfort people when nothing else can comfort them and offer hope when nothing else offers hope. I have seen Mystery heal fear that is otherwise unhealable. For years I have watched people in their confrontation with the unknown recover awe, wonder, joy, and aliveness. They have remembered that life is holy, and they have reminded me as well. In losing our sense of Mystery, we have become a nation of burned-out people. People who wonder do not burn out.