“He often envied people who hadn't read his favourite books. They had such happiness before them.”
―
Charles Finch,
A Stranger in Mayfair
“Her strength was in the integrity of her actions; she never compromised what she believed she ought to do.” ― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death
“When you're finally a grown-up, one of the things you find is that there are no grown-ups.” ― Charles Finch, The Last Enchantments
“Are you going to give a speech?' she asked gaily.He gave a choked laugh. 'Of course not,' he said. 'Not for ages.''My cousin Davey gave one on his very first day!' ...'In the Lords, I remember. It was about how he didn't like strawberry jam.''Be nice, Charles! It was a speech about fruit importation, which I admit devolved into something of a tirade.' She couldn't help but laugh. 'Still, you could talk about something more important.''Than jam? Impossible. We mustn't set the bar too high, Jane.” ― Charles Finch, The Fleet Street Murders
“The two things, love and snow, that make the world look fresh again” ― Charles Finch, The Last Enchantments
“I have stated, that in the thirteen species of ground-finches, a nearly perfect gradation may be traced, from a beak extraordinarily thick, to one so fine, that it may be compared to that of a warbler.” ― Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle
“...It had been a perfect nap -- the sort a man runs into now and again by chance...” ― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death
“'He often envied people who hadn't read his favourite books. They had such happiness before them.” ― Charles Finch, A Stranger in Mayfair
“There's nowhere that life feels more eternal, your dimwit youth more important, than Paris.” ― Charles Finch, The Last Enchantments
“To me, the single biggest mark of the amateur writer is a sense of hurry.Hurry to finish a manuscript, hurry to edit it, hurry to publish it. It’s definitely possible to write a book in a month, leave it unedited, and watch it go off into the world and be declared a masterpiece. It happens every fifty years or so.For the rest of us, the single greatest ally we have is time. There’s no page of prose in existence that its author can’t improve after it’s been in a drawer for a week. The same is true on the macro level – every time I finish a story or a book, I try to put it away and forget it for as long as I can. When I return, its problems are often so obvious and easy to fix that I’m amazed I ever struggled with them.Amateur writers are usually desperate to be published, as soon as possible. And I understand that feeling – you just want it to start, your career, your next book, whatever. But I wonder how many self-published novels might have had a chance at getting bought, and finding more readers, if their authors had a bit more patience with them?” ― Charles Finch
“Rooster here has missed Ned a few times himself, horse and all,' said the captain. 'I reckon his is on his way now to missing him again.'Rooster was holding a bottle with a little whiskey in it. He said, 'You keep on thinking that.' He drained off the whiskey in about three swallows and tapped the cork back in and tossed the bottle up in the air. He pulled his revolver and fired at it twice and missed. The bottle fell and rolled and Rooster shot at it two or three more times and broke it on the ground. He got out his sack of cartridges and reloaded his pistol. He said, 'The Chinaman is running them cheap shells in on me again.'LaBoeuf said, 'I thought maybe the sun was in your eyes. That is to say, your eye.'Rooster swung the cylinder back in his revolver and said, 'Eyes, is it? I'll show you eyes!' He jerked the sack of corn dodgers free from his saddle baggage. He got one of the dodgers out and flung it in the air and fired at it and missed. Then he flung another one up and he hit it. The corn dodger exploded. He was pleased with himself and he got a fresh bottle of whiskey from his baggage and treated himself to a drink.LaBoeuf pulled one of his revolvers and got two dodgers out of the sack and tossed them both up. He fired very rapidly but he only hit one. Captain Finch tried it with two and missed both of them. Then he tried with one and made a successful shot. Rooster shot at two and hit one. They drank whiskey and used up about sixty corn dodgers like that. None of them ever hit two at one throw with a revolver but Captain Finch finally did it with his Winchester repeating rifle, with somebody else throwing. It was entertaining for a while but there was nothing educational about it. I grew more and more impatient with them.I said, 'Come on, I have had my bait of this. I am ready to go. Shooting cornbread out here on this prairie is not taking us anywhere.'By then Rooster was using his rifle and the captain was throwing for him. 'Chunk high and not so far out this time,' said he.” ― Charles Portis, True Grit
“...men lived and died all the time by the peculiarities of their soul, which they could never expect one another to understand.” ― Charles Finch, A Burial at Sea
“I thought, too, about time. How fleet it is, and how certain, and like death how indifferent to our commentary upon it. Once not long before we had been boys and girls, and soon we would be middle-aged, thickening with rueful pleasure toward the thinness of old age.” ― Charles Finch, The Last Enchantments
“Like everyone I slipped into adulthood like a delinquent through the back door.” ― Charles Finch, The Last Enchantments
“There are a lot of ways for a novelist to create suspense, but also really only two: one a trick, one an art.The trick is to keep a secret. Or many secrets, even. In Lee Child’s books, Jack Reacher always has a big mystery to crack, but there are a series of smaller mysteries in the meantime, too, a new one appearing as soon as the last is resolved. J. K. Rowling is another master of this technique — Who gave Harry that Firebolt? How is Rita Skeeter getting her info?The art, meanwhile, the thing that makes “Pride and Prejudice” so superbly suspenseful, more suspenseful than the slickest spy novel, is to write stories in which characters must make decisions. “Breaking Bad” kept a few secrets from its audience, but for the most part it was fantastically adept at forcing Walter and Jesse into choice, into action. The same is true of “Freedom,” or “My Brilliant Friend,” or “Anna Karenina,” all novels that are hard to stop reading even when it seems as if it should be easy.” ― Charles Finch
“Great events make me quiet and calm—it is only trifles that irritate my nerves.” ― Charles Finch, An Old Betrayal
“The hardest part of losing a person, Charles, is that grief is only an absence. There is nowhere to go to touch it.” ― Charles Finch, The Woman in the Water
“the boredom of childhood is different, richer and more special than the boredom of adulthood,” ― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death
“I guess the lesson is you can’t go everywhere. You should still go everywhere you can.” ― Charles Finch
“Her strength was in the integrity of her actions; she never compromised what she believed she ought to do.” ― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death
“When you're finally a grown-up, one of the things you find is that there are no grown-ups.” ― Charles Finch, The Last Enchantments
“Are you going to give a speech?' she asked gaily.He gave a choked laugh. 'Of course not,' he said. 'Not for ages.''My cousin Davey gave one on his very first day!' ...'In the Lords, I remember. It was about how he didn't like strawberry jam.''Be nice, Charles! It was a speech about fruit importation, which I admit devolved into something of a tirade.' She couldn't help but laugh. 'Still, you could talk about something more important.''Than jam? Impossible. We mustn't set the bar too high, Jane.” ― Charles Finch, The Fleet Street Murders
“The two things, love and snow, that make the world look fresh again” ― Charles Finch, The Last Enchantments
“I have stated, that in the thirteen species of ground-finches, a nearly perfect gradation may be traced, from a beak extraordinarily thick, to one so fine, that it may be compared to that of a warbler.” ― Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle
“...It had been a perfect nap -- the sort a man runs into now and again by chance...” ― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death
“'He often envied people who hadn't read his favourite books. They had such happiness before them.” ― Charles Finch, A Stranger in Mayfair
“There's nowhere that life feels more eternal, your dimwit youth more important, than Paris.” ― Charles Finch, The Last Enchantments
“To me, the single biggest mark of the amateur writer is a sense of hurry.Hurry to finish a manuscript, hurry to edit it, hurry to publish it. It’s definitely possible to write a book in a month, leave it unedited, and watch it go off into the world and be declared a masterpiece. It happens every fifty years or so.For the rest of us, the single greatest ally we have is time. There’s no page of prose in existence that its author can’t improve after it’s been in a drawer for a week. The same is true on the macro level – every time I finish a story or a book, I try to put it away and forget it for as long as I can. When I return, its problems are often so obvious and easy to fix that I’m amazed I ever struggled with them.Amateur writers are usually desperate to be published, as soon as possible. And I understand that feeling – you just want it to start, your career, your next book, whatever. But I wonder how many self-published novels might have had a chance at getting bought, and finding more readers, if their authors had a bit more patience with them?” ― Charles Finch
“Rooster here has missed Ned a few times himself, horse and all,' said the captain. 'I reckon his is on his way now to missing him again.'Rooster was holding a bottle with a little whiskey in it. He said, 'You keep on thinking that.' He drained off the whiskey in about three swallows and tapped the cork back in and tossed the bottle up in the air. He pulled his revolver and fired at it twice and missed. The bottle fell and rolled and Rooster shot at it two or three more times and broke it on the ground. He got out his sack of cartridges and reloaded his pistol. He said, 'The Chinaman is running them cheap shells in on me again.'LaBoeuf said, 'I thought maybe the sun was in your eyes. That is to say, your eye.'Rooster swung the cylinder back in his revolver and said, 'Eyes, is it? I'll show you eyes!' He jerked the sack of corn dodgers free from his saddle baggage. He got one of the dodgers out and flung it in the air and fired at it and missed. Then he flung another one up and he hit it. The corn dodger exploded. He was pleased with himself and he got a fresh bottle of whiskey from his baggage and treated himself to a drink.LaBoeuf pulled one of his revolvers and got two dodgers out of the sack and tossed them both up. He fired very rapidly but he only hit one. Captain Finch tried it with two and missed both of them. Then he tried with one and made a successful shot. Rooster shot at two and hit one. They drank whiskey and used up about sixty corn dodgers like that. None of them ever hit two at one throw with a revolver but Captain Finch finally did it with his Winchester repeating rifle, with somebody else throwing. It was entertaining for a while but there was nothing educational about it. I grew more and more impatient with them.I said, 'Come on, I have had my bait of this. I am ready to go. Shooting cornbread out here on this prairie is not taking us anywhere.'By then Rooster was using his rifle and the captain was throwing for him. 'Chunk high and not so far out this time,' said he.” ― Charles Portis, True Grit
“...men lived and died all the time by the peculiarities of their soul, which they could never expect one another to understand.” ― Charles Finch, A Burial at Sea
“I thought, too, about time. How fleet it is, and how certain, and like death how indifferent to our commentary upon it. Once not long before we had been boys and girls, and soon we would be middle-aged, thickening with rueful pleasure toward the thinness of old age.” ― Charles Finch, The Last Enchantments
“Like everyone I slipped into adulthood like a delinquent through the back door.” ― Charles Finch, The Last Enchantments
“There are a lot of ways for a novelist to create suspense, but also really only two: one a trick, one an art.The trick is to keep a secret. Or many secrets, even. In Lee Child’s books, Jack Reacher always has a big mystery to crack, but there are a series of smaller mysteries in the meantime, too, a new one appearing as soon as the last is resolved. J. K. Rowling is another master of this technique — Who gave Harry that Firebolt? How is Rita Skeeter getting her info?The art, meanwhile, the thing that makes “Pride and Prejudice” so superbly suspenseful, more suspenseful than the slickest spy novel, is to write stories in which characters must make decisions. “Breaking Bad” kept a few secrets from its audience, but for the most part it was fantastically adept at forcing Walter and Jesse into choice, into action. The same is true of “Freedom,” or “My Brilliant Friend,” or “Anna Karenina,” all novels that are hard to stop reading even when it seems as if it should be easy.” ― Charles Finch
“Great events make me quiet and calm—it is only trifles that irritate my nerves.” ― Charles Finch, An Old Betrayal
“The hardest part of losing a person, Charles, is that grief is only an absence. There is nowhere to go to touch it.” ― Charles Finch, The Woman in the Water
“the boredom of childhood is different, richer and more special than the boredom of adulthood,” ― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death
“I guess the lesson is you can’t go everywhere. You should still go everywhere you can.” ― Charles Finch
