I have decided to add a page for some of my favorite quotes. Some are beautifully written, deep, and quite poetic while others just make plain, damned good sense. If you add a quote in the comment section, please give credit to the author.
“Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.”
“There is a drowsy state, between sleeping and waking, when you dream more in five minutes with your eyes half open, and yourself half conscious of everything that is passing around you, than you would in five nights with your eyes fast closed, and your senses wrapt in perfect unconsciousness. At such time, a mortal knows just enough of what his mind is doing, to form some glimmering conception of its mighty powers, its bounding from earth and spurning time and space, when freed from the restraint of its corporeal associate.”
“Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature—if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you—know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse.”
“Once I start work on a project, I don’t stop and I don’t slow down unless I absolutely have to. If I don’t write every day, the characters begin to stale off in my mind – they begin to seem like characters instead of real people. The tale’s narrative cutting edge starts to rust and I begin to lose my hold on the story’s plot and pace. Worst of all, the excitement of spinning something new begins to fade. The work starts to feel like work, and for most writers that is the smooch of death.”
“It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.”
“I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.”
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
“The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four people is suffering from a mental illness. Look at your 3 best friends. If they're ok, then it's you.”
The harder we make life for our protagonists, the greater the obstacles they have to overcome, the more readers will care. One of the problems I see in a lot of student fiction (and occasionally in my own) is that writers feel too much for their protagonists and thus take pity on them. But writing requires a certain level of ruthlessness. Sometimes, to be kind to our readers, we must be cruel to our characters.
"this above all; to thine ownself be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not be false to any man." * William Shakespeare (Polonius' advice to his son, Laertes in Shakespeare's Hamlet)
"A myth tells of that which was true, is true, and will be true. If we will allow it, myth will integrate intellect and intuition, night and day; our warring opposites are reconciled, male and female, spirit and flesh, desire and will, pain and joy, life and death." * Madeleine L'Engle
"For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, For love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends." * Ralph Waldo Emerson
"As long as we are persistent in our pursuit of our deepest destiny, we will continue to grow. We cannot choose the day or time when we fully bloom. It happens in its own time." * Denis Waitley
“Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.
ReplyDeleteThen write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.”
* William Faulkner
“In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”
ReplyDelete* William Faulkner
“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”
ReplyDelete* Stephen King
“There is a drowsy state, between sleeping and waking, when you dream more in five minutes with your eyes half open, and yourself half conscious of everything that is passing around you, than you would in five nights with your eyes fast closed, and your senses wrapt in perfect unconsciousness. At such time, a mortal knows just enough of what his mind is doing, to form some glimmering conception of its mighty powers, its bounding from earth and spurning time and space, when freed from the restraint of its corporeal associate.”
ReplyDelete* Charles Dickens
“Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature—if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you—know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse.”
ReplyDelete* Henry David Thoreau
“Once I start work on a project, I don’t stop and I don’t slow down unless I absolutely have to. If I don’t write every day, the characters begin to stale off in my mind – they begin to seem like characters instead of real people. The tale’s narrative cutting edge starts to rust and I begin to lose my hold on the story’s plot and pace. Worst of all, the excitement of spinning something new begins to fade. The work starts to feel like work, and for most writers that is the smooch of death.”
ReplyDelete* Stephen King
“Perception is reality to the perceiver.”
ReplyDelete* David Claude McCoy
“It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.”
ReplyDelete* William Faulkner
“When you try to squeeze two hours into thirty minutes, you lose an hour and a half.”
ReplyDelete* David Claude McCoy
“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
ReplyDelete* Stephen King
“Be the rhinoceros beetle on the wine bottle; see the scene and record it with words, sentences, and paragraphs that flow and tell the story well.”
ReplyDelete* David Claude McCoy
“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”
ReplyDelete* Abraham Lincoln
“I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing.”
ReplyDelete* Thomas Jefferson
"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing."
ReplyDelete* Benjamin Franklin
“Those who give up their liberty for more security neither deserve liberty nor security.”
ReplyDelete* Benjamin Franklin
Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.
ReplyDelete* Kurt Vonnegut
“I'm not a humanitarian, I'm a hell-raiser.”
ReplyDelete* Mother Jones
“Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.”
ReplyDelete* Mother Jones
“I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.”
ReplyDelete* Mother Jones
“I am not afraid of the pen, or the scaffold, or the sword.”
ReplyDelete* Mother Jones
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
ReplyDelete* Oscar Wilde
“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
ReplyDelete* Bernard M. Baruch
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
ReplyDelete* Albert Einstein
"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid."
ReplyDelete* Albert Einstein
“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
ReplyDelete* Mae West
“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
ReplyDelete* Mahatma Gandhi
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
ReplyDelete* Eleanor Roosevelt
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
ReplyDelete* H. Jackson Brown Jr.
“A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.”
ReplyDelete* Steve Martin
“Why do I talk to myself? It’s because I’m the only one that will listen to me.”
ReplyDelete* David Claude McCoy
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
ReplyDelete* Ernest Hemingway
“The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four people is suffering from a mental illness. Look at your 3 best friends. If they're ok, then it's you.”
ReplyDelete* Rita Mae Brown
“If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t exist, just like everyone else I’ve never met.”
ReplyDelete* David Claude McCoy
The harder we make life for our protagonists, the greater the obstacles they have to overcome, the more readers will care. One of the problems I see in a lot of student fiction (and occasionally in my own) is that writers feel too much for their protagonists and thus take pity on them. But writing requires a certain level of ruthlessness. Sometimes, to be kind to our readers, we must be cruel to our characters.
ReplyDelete* Barbara Rogan
"this above all; to thine ownself be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not be false to any man."
ReplyDelete* William Shakespeare (Polonius' advice to his son, Laertes in Shakespeare's Hamlet)
"Reading makes a full man, meditation a profound man, discourse a clear man."
ReplyDelete* Benjamin Franklin
"A myth tells of that which was true, is true, and will be true. If we will allow it, myth will integrate intellect and intuition, night and day; our warring opposites are reconciled, male and female, spirit and flesh, desire and will, pain and joy, life and death."
ReplyDelete* Madeleine L'Engle
"For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, For love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends."
ReplyDelete* Ralph Waldo Emerson
You can convince yourself into believing anything, so be careful what you say to you.
ReplyDelete* David Claude McCoy
"Happiness is only in loving."
ReplyDelete* Leo Tolstoy
"I aint no better than anybody else... but nobody's better than me, either."
ReplyDelete* Bobby Porter
"As long as we are persistent in our pursuit of our deepest destiny, we will continue to grow. We cannot choose the day or time when we fully bloom. It happens in its own time."
ReplyDelete* Denis Waitley