“Working on a novel is very solitary and I get to be the boss. I’m the dictator, so I win every battle. So, in that sense, novels are easier because you don’t have to answer to anyone. And then, you go into something like film and there are more cooks in the kitchen, so to speak.”
— Nicholas Sparks
“Good and bad, strengths and faults, he was hers forever.”
“It’s probably not going to lead to anything. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. If everyone who thought they might fail didn’t even try, where would we be today?”
“When I was seventeen, I don’t think I even knew what love was. But when it’s right, it’s right, and you just know it.”
“It doesn’t matter to me whether I write in a man’s voice or a woman’s, or first or third person for that matter. Those choices come down to the story and I just go with it.”
“It was inevitable for people to try to create a sense of normalcy in a place where nothing was normal. It helped one get through the day, to add predictability to a life that was inherently unpredictable.”
“I was in love, and the feeling was even more wonderful than I ever imagined it could be.”
“For nothing is more fulfilling than love itself.”
“It takes a long time to grow an old friend. Trust is built one single moment at a time.”
“Being around someone who accepts and supports you will remind you to accept and support yourself.”
“I came to the conclusion that unrealized hopes, even small ones, were always wrenching.”
“As a girl, she had come to believe in the ideal man – the prince or knight of her childhood stories. In the real world, however, men like that simply didn’t exist.”
“If pinpointing God’s presence were really that simple, then he supposed the beaches would be more crowded in the mornings. They would be filled with people on their own quests, instead of people jogging or walking their dogs or fishing in the surf.”
“I suppose more than anything, it’s the way of life in this part of the country that influences my writing. In Eastern North Carolina, with the exception of Wilmington, most people live in small towns.”
“One of the things I’ve learned in my life is that sometimes you’ve got to take a chance.”
“By the time she got back to work, the only thing Gabby knew for certain was that as forgiving as he’d been, she’d never live down what she’d done, and since there wasn’t a rock large enough to crawl under, it was in her best interest to find a way to avoid him.”
“But because they didn’t see each other very often, their relationship had more ups and downs than either of them had experienced before. Since everything felt right when they were together, everything felt wrong when they weren’t.”
“If you discovered something that made you tighten inside, you had better try to learn more about it.”
“That she had somehow taken the initiative to learn my name should have struck me then, but it did not. Instead, as she stood on the street with the rain coming down and mascara running onto her cheeks, all I could think was that I’d never seen anyone more beautiful.”
“I found that as I flipped the days on the calendar, the worries I had about our relationship had began to diminish.”
“Theresa, I know there’s a part of you that believes you can change someone, but the reality is that you can’t. You can change yourself, and Garrett can change himself, but you can’t do it for him.”
“If you’re going to sit on someone’s tombstone, you might as well know something about them, right?”
“It would be like describing colors to someone blind from birth: The words might be understood, but the concept would remain mysterious and private.”
“I don’t know if spirits do indeed roam the world, but even if they do, I will sense your presence everywhere. When I listen to the ocean, it will be your whispers; when I see a dazzling sunset, it will be your image in the sky.”
“Admittedly, there was a lot she still didn’t know about him, but she did know this: He completed her in a way that she’d never thought possible. Knowledge isn’t everything, she told herself, and she knew then that, in Nana’s words, he was the toast to her butter.”
“If people don’t like you, or they think you’re strange, then that’s their problem.”
“He smiled, thinking that for just an instant, it was easy to imagine they were still married, both of them on the same team, both of them still in love. Except, of course, that they weren’t.”
“Even when we were standing in church and I was getting ready to take my vow I can remember wishing that you were standing there instead of him.”
“I try to write every day until the book is done, but the exact process depends on the story and its structure. Sometimes, if the story is more linear, I write it from beginning to end.”
“Most people lived their lives like criminals: act first, worry about the consequences later.”
“Trust me on this: no one is better off alone.”
“It took strength to hold on to inner passion, and Noah had done that.”
“Poets knew that isolation in nature, far from people and things man-made, was good for the soul, and he’d always identified with poets.”
“Unless you had a popular video on YouTube or could perform shows in front of thousands, musical ability meant nothing.”
“For some reason, it didn’t feel right. Victor’s words seemed to confirm that. There was another reason that he’d come here. Falling in love with Elizabeth might have been part of it. But that wasn’t all. Something else was coming. There is more.”
“I have seldom been described as shy.”
“I tell myself that I know you, and then when I think about it, I realize that I don’t.”
“Say I’m a bird.”
“The inspiration for my novels comes from the depths of a creative well, based on asking myself questions over and over. I try to write something different each time I sit down to write; I try to surprise the readers.”
“I don’t want to be on the phone talking numbers and budget. I want to be creating a world.”
“If I tried to write long-hand, I suppose I’d never finish a novel. I edit too much as I write – the paper would be “white-out” and sharpie marks. Writing with a computer works for me, so I stick with it.”
“By making the place and the people and the feelings real, by the time someone closes the cover of one of my books, they have, hopefully, felt all of the emotions of life.”
“I think my dad was happy. I phrase it like this because he seldom showed much emotion. Hugs and kisses wwere a rarity for me growing up, and when they did happen, they often struck me as lifeless, something he did because he felt he was supposed to, not because he wanted to.”
“He’d lived long enough to know that everyone handled grief in different ways, and little by little, they all seemed to accept their new lives.”
“I just tell people what they already know, but are afraid to admit to themselves.”
“There is a fine line I have to walk throughout the writing process in a novel. It is this line between drama and melodrama, and it is this line between evoking genuine emotional power and being manipulative.”
“As the warm air blew in the car, simple snapshots of the life they’d lived together surfaced in his mind; but as always, those images led inexorably to their final day together.”
“I think that men know how to romance a woman and most do it well, at least for a time, otherwise women wouldn’t marry them. The problem is that most of them begin to rest on their laurels.”
“Find out who you are, and do it on purpose.”
“What the younger generation didn’t understand was that the grass was greenest where it’s watered...”
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