While literary agents prepare for an onslaught of pandemic themed submissions, we’re compiling quotes from bestselling novels that could have been written in direct response to 2020’s lockdown…
“And she learned that you couldn’t stockpile anything that mattered, really. Feelings, people, songs, sex, fireworks: they existed only in time, and when it was over, so were they.”
– Garth Risk Hallberg, City on Fire
“Sarcasm and compassion are two of the qualities that make life on Earth tolerable.”
– Nick Hornby, Songbook
“No one can be independent of other people completely, so why not give up the attempt, she thought, go running in the other direction, depend on people for everything, allow them to depend on you, why not.”
– Sally Rooney, Normal People
“We’re all here. Alive and unwell.”
– Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
“That boy hardly needed a mask when his naked face was already impenetrable.”
– Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin
“I mean, normally, being in lockdown, being in constant detention, it’d break me, but now — what’s the worst they can do? Bring back Moldy Voldy and have him torture me? Nope.”
– J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Parts One and Two
“We’re each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?”
– Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, Volume 1
“When you work in a convenience store, people often look down on you for working there. I find this fascinating, and I like to look them in the face when they do this to me. And as I do so I always think: that’s what a human is.”
– Sayaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman
“Another page turns on the calendar, April now, not March…I am spinning the silk threads of my story, weaving the fabric of my world…I spun out of control. Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest.”
– Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls
“Time moves slowly, but passes quickly.”
– Alice Walker, The Color Purple
“What looks like garbage from one angle might be art from another. Maybe it did take a crisis to get to know yourself; maybe you needed to get whacked hard by life before you understood what you wanted out of it.”
– Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care
“Some days I woke up and got out of bed and brushed my teeth like any normal human being; some days I woke up and lay in bed and looked at the ceiling and wondered what the hell the point was of getting out of bed and brushing my teeth like any normal human being.”
– Ned Vizzini, It’s Kind of a Funny Story
“Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.”
– Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
“Everything in life is just for a while.”
– Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly
“‘May I go and help carry the things to the poor little children?’ asked Beth, eagerly.
‘I shall take the cream and the muffins,’ added Amy, heroically giving up the articles she most liked.”
– Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
“I personally don’t like depressing subjects, people say, as if mortality is a lifestyle choice, disease and violence and sorrow a matter of taste.”
– Sarah Moss, The Tidal Zone
“We were not a hugging people. In terms of emotional comfort it was our belief that no amount of physical contact could match the healing powers of a well made cocktail.”
– David Sedaris, Naked
“I wonder what Piglet is doing,” thought Pooh. “I wish I were there to be doing it, too.”
– A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
“’Being brave isn’t the same as being okay,’ my mum said quietly.”
– Candice Carty-Williams, Queenie
“I have no idea what’s awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.”
– Albert Camus, The Plague
“Nothing is worse than to finish a good shit, then reach over and find the toilet paper container empty. Even the most horrible human being on earth deserves to wipe his ass.”
– Charles Bukowski, Factotum