Top 90 Jean M. Auel Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Ayla, I looked for you all my life and didn’t know I was looking. You are everything I ever wanted, everything I ever dreamed of in a woman, and more. You are a fascinating enigma, a paradox. You are totally honest, open; you hide nothing: yet you are the most mysterious woman I’ve ever met.”

— Jean M. Auel

2. “Life is neither static nor unchanging. With no individuality, there can be no change, no adaptation and, in an inherently changing world, any species unable to adapt is also doomed.”

— Jean M. Auel

3. “Science Fiction is not just about the future of space ships travelling to other planets, it is fiction based on science and I am using science as my basis for my fiction, but it’s the science of prehistory – palaeontology and archaeology – rather than astronomy or physics.”

— Jean M. Auel

4. “They stared at each other, wanting each other, drawn to each other, but their silent shout of love went unheard in the roar of misunderstanding, and the clatter of culturally ingrained beliefs.”

— Jean M. Auel

5. “Mog-ur has been spending all day and half the night in the place of the spirits. It must be a ceremony. While Ayla was gone, he wouldn’t go near it; now he hardly ever comes out. When he does, he’s so absentminded he forgets to eat. Sometimes he forgets to eat while he’s eating.”

— Jean M. Auel

6. “She loved him, more than she could ever find words for, but this love he felt for her was not quite the same. It wasn’t so much stronger, as more demanding, more insistent. As though he feared he would lose that which he had finally won.”

— Jean M. Auel

Featured in: Romance Quotes

7. “Art was as much in the activity as in the results. Works of art were not just the finished product, but the thought, the action, the process that created them.”

— Jean M. Auel

8. “Incluso cuando vuelves a un mismo lugar, ya no es el mismo.”

— Jean M. Auel

9. “You learn to write by writing, and by reading and thinking about how writers have created their characters and invented their stories. If you are not a reader, don’t even think about being a writer.”

— Jean M. Auel

Featured in: Reading Quotes

10. “I can’t tell you any more than any other writer can tell you why they write, and I don’t know what my influences are.”

— Jean M. Auel

11. “I had tears coming out of my eyes. And it was the characters that got me there.”

— Jean M. Auel

12. “A leader must always put the clan’s interests before his own; it is the first thing you must learn. That is why self-control is so essential to a leader. The clan’s survival is his responsibility. A leader has less freedom than a woman, Broud. He must do many things he may not want to. If necessary, he must even disown the son of his mate. Do you understand?”

— Jean M. Auel

13. “The earth we leave is beautiful and rich; it gave us all we needed for all the generations we have lived. How will you leave it when it is your turn? What can you do?”

— Jean M. Auel

14. “Each book has been different and has been challenging in its own way to write.”

— Jean M. Auel

15. “Usually it will be something special or unusual. It may be a stone you have never seen before, or a root with a special shape that has meaning for you. You must learn to understand with your heart and mind, not your eyes and ears; then you will know. But, when the time comes and you find a sign your totem has left you, put it in your amulet. It will bring you luck.”

— Jean M. Auel

16. “It took some time to gather the research and develop it into the storyline, and to finally finish an origin myth poem that I had been working on for twenty years.”

— Jean M. Auel

17. “When people treat others badly, they have to rationalize it so they can go on living with themselves. We give ourselves excuses.”

— Jean M. Auel

18. “You weren’t being punished. You were waiting for me.”

— Jean M. Auel

19. “No one told her it was impossible to rapid-fire two stones from a sling, because it had never been done before, and since no one told her she couldn’t, she taught herself to do it.”

— Jean M. Auel

20. “I really fell in love with Africa.”

— Jean M. Auel

21. “At a bend in the river, an upland stream fell into the Middle Mother, which itself came from higher ground. The marrow-chilling air had caught and stilled the waters in the act of falling, and the strong dry winds had sculpted them into strange and grotesque shapes. Caricatures of living creatures captured by frost, poised to begin a headlong flight down the course of the long river, seemed to be waiting impatiently, as if knowing the turning of the season, and their release, was not far off.”

— Jean M. Auel

22. “It’s called ergot. Smell.”

— Jean M. Auel

23. “Brun led them well beyond the spoor of cave lions before he stopped and studied the landscape. Across the river, as far as he could see, the prairie stretched out in low rolling hills into a flat green expanse in the distance. His view was unobstructed. The few stunted trees, distorted by the constant wind into caricatures of arrested motion, merely put the open country in perspective and emphasized the emptiness.”

— Jean M. Auel

24. “Life sometimes gets in the way of writing.”

— Jean M. Auel

25. “Nothing works all the time.”

— Jean M. Auel

26. “He began to understand that just because some people thought certain behavior was wrong, that didn’t make it so. A person could resist popular belief and stand up for personal principles, and though there might be consequences, not everything would necessarily be lost. In fact, something important might be gained, if only within oneself.”

— Jean M. Auel

27. “The Shamud had told him once that the Mother favoured him so much no woman could refuse him, not even the Mother Herself could refuse him – that was his gift – but he warned him to be wary. Gifts from the Mother were not an unmixed blessing, they put one in Her debt.”

— Jean M. Auel

28. “I could write historical fiction, or science fiction, or a mystery but since I find it fascinating to research the clues of some little know period and develop a story based on that, I will probably continue to do it.”

— Jean M. Auel

29. “Now the Spirit of the Cave Lion wants me to leave.” She looked up at the tall man beside her. “Do you think we’ll ever come back?” “No,” he said. There was a hollow ring to his voice. He was looking in the small cave, but he was seeing another place and another time. “Even if you go back to the same place, it’s not the same.”

— Jean M. Auel

30. “The difference in the brains of men and women was imposed by nature, and only cemented by culture.”

— Jean M. Auel

31. “It’s harder to kill people. The empathy is so much stronger that the mind must invent new reasons. But, if we can somehow link it to our own survival, the mind will make the devious twists and turns necessary to rationalize it. We’re very good at that. But it changes people. They learn to hate. Your wolf doesn’t need to hate what he kills. It would be easier if we could kill without compunction, like your wolf does, but then, we wouldn’t be human.”

— Jean M. Auel

32. “It wasn’t exultation she felt, not the excitement of a first kill or even the satisfaction of overcoming a powerful beast. It was something deeper, more humbling. It was the knowledge that she had overcome herself.”

— Jean M. Auel

33. “They are lazy, worthless men who contribute nothing, unless they’re shamed into it, and they have little shame.”

— Jean M. Auel

34. “I’m just writing a story that I want to read.”

— Jean M. Auel

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

35. “Again Creb grunted. It was the usual noncommittal comment used by men when responding to a woman. It carried only enough meaning to indicate the woman had been understood, without acknowledging too much significance in what she said.”

— Jean M. Auel

36. “As Creb looked at the peaceful, trusting face of the strange girl in his lap, he felt a deep love flowering in his soul for her. He couldn’t have loved her more if she were his own.”

— Jean M. Auel

37. “They stopped for a moment to watch the evening sky transform itself in a show of dazzling radiance as gold transmuted into shades of vermilion that waned into shimmering purple, then darkened to deep blue as the first glittering sky fires appeared. Soon the sooty black night became a backdrop to the multitude of blazing lights that filled the summer sky, with a concentrated accumulation wending its way like a path across the vault above.”

— Jean M. Auel

38. “And that’s how I start myself. I usually go back a couple of pages, maybe to the beginning of the chapter, and I start reading. And as I’m reading, I’m tweaking – putting in a different word, changing the syntax, putting that clause over there, you know that sort of thing.”

— Jean M. Auel

Featured in: Reading Quotes

39. “If Earth’s children ever forget who provides for them, we may wake up someday and find we don’t have a home.”

— Jean M. Auel

40. “South Holding, was the acknowledged leader of the Twenty-ninth Cave, but Summer Camp and.”

— Jean M. Auel

41. “The little girl’s gentle touch struck an inner chord in his lonely old heart.”

— Jean M. Auel

42. “Brun, this is the man Ayla saw as whole. This is the man who set her standard. This is the man she loves and compares with her son. Look at me, my brother! Did I deserve to live? Does Ayla’s son deserve to live less?” The.”

— Jean M. Auel

43. “Sometimes women who aren’t perfect are more interesting; they’ve done more, or learned something.”

— Jean M. Auel

44. “Illness and accidents were mysterious manifestations of the war of the spirits, fought on the battleground of the body.”

— Jean M. Auel

45. “I had an idea for a story about a young woman who was living with people who were different, not just superficially different – such as hair colour, or eye colour, or skin colour – but different in some significant way.”

— Jean M. Auel

46. “Though my books are written from a historical perspective, I have goon so far back that I am in the realm of prehistorical speculation rather than simple historical fact to weave my stories around.”

— Jean M. Auel

47. “I don’t write for publishers, certainly not for critics, and not for readers, But I am delighted that so many people have found my books enjoyable and want to continue to read them.”

— Jean M. Auel

48. “The first snow sifted down silently during the night. Ayla exclaimed with delight when she stepped out of her cave in the morning. A pristine whiteness softened the contours of the familiar landscape creating a magical dreamland of fantastic shapes and mythical plants. Bushes had top hats of soft snow, conifers were dressed in new gowns of white finery, and bare exposed limbs were clothed in shining coats that outlined each twig against the deep blue sky.”

— Jean M. Auel

49. “A person could resist popular belief and stand up for personal principles, and though there may be consequences, not everything would necessarily be lost. In fact, something important might be gained, if only within oneself.”

— Jean M. Auel

50. “It was a tense moment. If Norg refused them, they would have no choice but to return the long distance back to their cave. It would be a grave breach of propriety, but to allow Ayla entrance would be tantamount to accepting her as a woman of the Clan; at least it would give Brun a clear edge. Norg looked again at his mog-ur, then at the powerful one-eyed man who was The Mog-ur, then back at the man who was leader of the clan ranked first of all the clans. If The Mog-ur said so, what could he do?”

— Jean M. Auel