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A fondness for martyrdom, especially of the verbal variety, is common to the young.

Barbara Mertz

Sometimes the characters develop almost without your knowing it. You find them doing things you hadn’t planned on, and then I have to go back to page 42 and fix things. I’m not recommending it as a way to write. It’s very sloppy, but it works for me.
BARBARA MERTZ

Character Knowing Writing
Superstition has its practical uses.
BARBARA MERTZ

Practical Superstitions Use
There are too many people in the world as it is, but the supply of ancient manuscripts is severely limited.
BARBARA MERTZ

Ancient People World
Children, I feel, are as much entitled to privacy as human beings.
BARBARA MERTZ

Children Feel Privacy
A lady cannot be blamed if a master criminal takes a fancy to her.
BARBARA MERTZ

Criminals Fancy Masters
He hesitated for a moment. Then he said softly, “I love you, Mother.” He took my hand and kissed it, and folded my fingers round the stem of the rose. He had stripped it of its thorns.
BARBARA MERTZ

Love Mother Son You
When one is striding bravely into the future one cannot watch one’s footing.
BARBARA MERTZ

Foot Future Many One People Watches
a church ought to express the joy of religion as well as its majesty.
BARBARA MERTZ

Church Joy Majesty
That’s maturity-when you realize that you’ve finally arrived at a state of ignorance as profound as your parents.
BARBARA MERTZ

Ignorance Maturity Profound
I would not be at all surprised to find that it was for gold that Cain committed the first murder. (It happened a very long time ago, and Holy Writ, though no doubt divinely inspired, is a trifle careless about details. God is not a historian).
BARBARA MERTZ

Doubt Gold Long Time
Getting an idea for a book is not the problem, but you need 300 ideas – an idea a page.
BARBARA MERTZ

Book Idea Needs
I can do a book in three months if I spend all day, seven days a week at it and, in fact, I work better that way.
BARBARA MERTZ

Book Three Way
There was no warning, not even a knock. The door flew open, and he forgot his present aches and pains in anticipation of what lay in store. The figure that stood in the door was not that of an enemy. It was worse. It was his mother.
BARBARA MERTZ

Doors Mother Pain
I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be the respected patriarch of an ordinary English family.” “Very boring, Emerson.
BARBARA MERTZ

English Ordinary Sometimes Wonder
…Nefret said with a gusty sigh, ‘Well, that’s done it. We may as well join in, Ramses, family arguments are the favorite form of amusement here and this looks like being a loud one.
BARBARA MERTZ

Amusement Done Looks
Since I am not as stupid as my children believe I am, I had immediately realized this might be a ruse, but I was not at all averse to a confrontation. In fact, I had been hoping for some such thing.
BARBARA MERTZ

Believe Children Stupid

A fondness for martyrdom, especially of the verbal variety, is common to the young.

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A fondness for martyrdom, especially of the verbal variety, is common to the young.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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