58 Quotes by Alexandra Ripley

They have a saying, the French, that no woman, can be truly beautiful who is not also sometimes truly ugly.

Books have become products, like cereal or perfume or deodorant.

I really don't know why Scarlett has such appeal. When I began writing the sequel, I had a lot of trouble because Scarlett is not my kind of person. She's virtually illiterate, has no taste, never learns from her mistakes.

Painting dissolves the forms at its command, or tends to; it melts them into color. Drawing, on the other hand, goes about resolving forms, giving edge and essence to things. To see shapes clearly, one outlines them--whether on paper or in the mind. Therefore, Michelangelo, a profoundly cultivated man, called drawing the basis of all knowledge whatsoever.

Personal answers to ultimate questions. That is what we seek.

Painting dissolves the forms at its command ... it melts them into color.

So-called restoration is at least as tricky as brain surgery. Most pictures expire under scalpel and sponge.

This moment, this being, is the thing. My life is all life in little. The moon, the planets, pass around my heart. The sun, now hidden by the round bulk of this earth, shines into me, and in me as well. The gods and the angels both good and bad are like the hairs of my own head, seemingly numberless, and growing from within. I people the cosmos from myself, it seems, yet what am I? A puff of dust, or a brief coughing spell, with emptiness and silence to follow.

I have but one life to give to adventure.