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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| d84791e | In a sense, every story or poem is a vacation. | Thomas C. Foster | ||
| 54b2934 | Every language has a grammar, a set of rules that govern usage and meaning, and literary language is no different. It's all more or less arbitrary of course, just like language itself. | grammar language literature | Thomas C. Foster | |
| d8bada3 | Everywhere you look, the ground is already camped on. So you sigh and pitch your tent where you can, knowing someone else has been there before. | Thomas C. Foster | ||
| ddf0130 | We have to bring our imaginations to bear on a story if we are to see all it's possibilitiess; otherwise it's just about somebody who did something. Whatever we take away from stories in the way of significance, symbolism, theme, meaning, pretty much anything except character and plot, we discover because our imagination engages with that of the author. Pretty amazing when you consider that the author may have been dead for thousands of yea.. | Thomas C. Foster | ||
| dd61e35 | History is story, too. You don't encounter her directly; you've only heard of her through narrative of one sort or another. | stories | Thomas C. Foster | |
| 06340a7 | Whenever people eat or drink together, it's communion. | Thomas C. Foster | ||
| a8fddcb | Don't read with your eyes. | Thomas C. Foster | ||
| ddd09af | Paris is an insomniac's heaven. There is always something to photograph, something hidden in the shadows. One can see so much more in the darkness than in the light of day. | Francine Prose | ||
| 42022f5 | It is time for writers to admit that nothing in this world makes sense. Only fools and charlatans think they know and understand everything. The stupider they are, the wider they conceive their horizons to be. And if an artist decides to declare that he understands nothing of what he sees--this in itself constitutes a considerable clarity in the realm of thought, and a great step forward. | Francine Prose | ||
| ccf2014 | Anne is remarkably restrained in calibrating the amount of fear she will admit into the diary. The air raids, the break-ins, and the brutality reported by the helpers and glimpsed from the window appear at regular intervals, so that the reader can never fully relax. | Francine Prose | ||
| 518495d | good writing should be grasped at once--in a second. | Francine Prose | ||
| 13e8ac0 | So it may be that reading your work aloud will not only improve its quality but save your life in the process. | Francine Prose | ||
| 79209ab | Not all great writers may seem great to us, regardless of how often and how hard we try to see their virtues. I know, for example, that Trollope is considered to have been a brilliant novelist, but I've never quite understood what makes his fans so fervent. Still, our tastes change as we ourselves change and grow older, and perhaps in a few months or so Trollope will have become my new favorite writer. | Francine Prose | ||
| 610b7df | All of us have observed how often our erotic attractions reflect a mysterious but consistent taste, almost as if we were ordering a favorite dish | Francine Prose | ||
| b91e83f | Only a natural writer could sound as if she is not writing so much as thinking on the page. | Francine Prose | ||
| 1ea59c2 | AMONG THE DEMONS that taunt a writer before he can open a vein and write in his own blood are the devils that whisper: Are you brave enough to tell the truth? | Francine Prose | ||
| afed208 | Consequently, we sympathize. We identify. We care. In fact, most writers would like you to identify | Francine Prose | ||
| edc1fd0 | There are many occasions in literature in which telling is far more effective than showing. | Francine Prose | ||
| c625211 | Every page was once a blank page, just as every word that appears on it now was not always there, but instead reflects the final result of countless large and small deliberations. | Francine Prose | ||
| 733d7fd | We went through the Happy Valley to the little cove. The azaleas were finished now, the petals lay brown and crinkled on the moss. The bluebells had not faded yet, they made a solid carpet in the woods above the valley, and the young bracken was shooting up, curling and green. The moss smelt rich and deep, and the bluebells were earthy, bitter. I lay down in the long grass beside the bluebells with my hands behind my head, and Jasper at my .. | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 32721db | Iam confused. It is hard to understand brains. My grandpa had a heart attack and now his brain is making him forget what is real. He told me yesterday that he was flying a plane and it crashed. He was telling me all about it when Mom made him stop and made me go home. She is worried that it will make me scared. I told her that there are so many things in the world to be scared about and this is just one. That did not make her feel better. | Rebecca L. Brown | ||
| fd1a705 | A friend understands what you're going through enough and can help you through it. A best friend Understands what you're going through too much and ,frankly, it's giving them a headache. | Rebecca Brown | ||
| 0d92169 | I spent a good amount of time considering my life and where I had been and the stunning fact that I had no idea where I was going. When I was in the midst of my career, I imagined myself on a trajectory that pointed only up, toward success. When Fred was born it was the same, a career of baby raising that led to child raising that led to the eventual victory of a young man capable of co-opting my responsibilities and then a young woman will.. | Rebecca L. Brown | ||
| 9ef69eb | I seen but little of this world, Except my corner of it; The city never drew me, For I knew I could not love it. What I loved best was watching The garden getting ripe And a pouch of sweet tobacco And my old cob pipe. What I loved best was a harvest moon Before a frosty morn And lamplight in the barn lot And them long, straight rows of corn. I was plain and country; That's where it starts and ends, But nobody loved her family more, Or treas.. | Richard Peck | ||
| 300e0eb | I don't think grandma's a very good influence on us. | Richard Peck | ||
| cd7ba87 | And I'll tell you something else for free. If you set a foot over that doorsill, I'll wring your red neck. | Richard Peck | ||
| 28bbdd4 | As I pen these words to leave a lasting record, I wonder myself where it all began. | fiction ghosts girls handwritten lasting pen prologue second-sight truth where | Richard Peck | |
| eebb186 | Fame is a funny thing, like a secret, both are hard to keep. | secrets | Richard Peck | |
| a61705c | Caitlyn, s'il vous plait!" Madame said, whacking the blackboard with her stick, its end pointing to the irregular verb devoir, "to have to." She wanted Caitlyn to conjugate it. Caitlyn felt the class's attention turn to her, and a clammy sweat broke out in her armpits. Her brain stopped in its tracks, unable to move under the pressure. A vague sense of having known how to speak French in her dreams tickled at her brain, but the skill was as.. | Lisa Cach | ||
| 93b7edf | Empty yourself of everything," he said. "Let your mind rest at peace. Ten thousand things rise and fall while the self watches. They grow and flourish and return to the source. Returning to the source is stillness, which is the way of nature. The way of nature is unchanging. Practice your breathing and think upon this, Moirin." | Jacqueline Carey | ||
| e28490e | Still, it's an interesting technique--leaving one person behind in order to find her or him somewhere else. And *in* someone else. | Caleb Carr | ||
| 143975d | good books were the best protection from evil that Pepe had actually held in his hands--you could not hold faith in Jesus in your hands, not in quite the same way you could hold good books. | John Irving | ||
| 762d9ac | Small towns may revile you, but they have to keep you-they can't turn you away. | small-communities | John Irving | |
| 294bf87 | As for my faith: I've become my father's son-that is, I've become the kind of believer that Pastor Merrill used to be. Doubt one minute, faith the next-sometimes inspired, sometimes in despair. Canon Campbell taught me to ask myself a question when the latter state settles upon me. Whom do I know who's alive whom I love? Good question-one that can bring you back to life. These days, I love Dan Needham and the Rev. Katherine Keeling; I know .. | John Irving | ||
| 2a1597f | May God watch over your soul, which no man may abuse. | John Irving | ||
| 9bd378f | It was not necessarily what Ketchum might have said about the war in Iraq, or the never-ending mess in the Middle East, that particularly interested Danny or Six-Pack Pam. It was what Ketchum would have said about anything. It was the old logger's voice that Danny and Six-Pack wanted to hear. Thus we try to keep our heroes alive; hence we remember them | John Irving | ||
| 217a69a | It was from just a few sentences that a writer learned anything from another writer. | John Irving | ||
| 3b945cd | the surprised bookseller, whose name (inexplicably) was Mendelssohn. He was no relation to the German composer, and this Mendelssohn either overliked his last name or disliked his first so much that he never revealed it. (When Ted had once asked him his first name, Mendelssohn had said only: "Not Felix.")" | John Irving | ||
| 455be00 | Wallace Worthington would have reminded Wilbur Larch of someone he might have met at the Channing-Peabodys', where Dr. Larch went to perform his second abortion - the rich people's abortion, as Larch thought of it. Wallace Worthington would strike Homer Wells as what a real King of New England should look like. | John Irving | ||
| 644a7a9 | It's a no-win argument--that business of what we're born with and what our environment does to us. And it's a boring argument, because it simplifies the mysteries that attend both our birth and our growth. | John Irving | ||
| 64645b9 | Faith itself is a miracle, | John Irving | ||
| 3b20442 | But first, he knew he had to apologize for hurting Dr. Larch's feelings - it had all just slipped out of him, and it made him almost cry to think that he had cause Dr. Larch any suffering. He went straight across the hall to the dispensary, where he could see what he thought were Dr. Larch's feet extending off the foot of the dispensary bed; the dispensary medicine cabinets blocked the rest of the bed from view. He spoke to Dr. Larch's feet.. | John Irving | ||
| 8510b24 | Candy felt helpless; no one seemed to understand why she was standing there. Children were colliding with her at hip level, and this awkward, darkly handsome young man, who was surely her own age but seemed somehow older...was she supposed to tell him why she'd come to St. Cloud's? Couldn't anyone tell by just looking at her? Then Homer Wells looked at her in that way; their eyes met. Candy thought that he had seen her many times before, th.. | John Irving | ||
| c70d41a | I guess [Mrs. Reagan is] one of those many American adults of a certain advanced age who believe that the root of all evil lies in the area of young people's self-abuse. Someone should tell Mrs. Reagan that young people-- not even young people on drugs-- are not the ones responsible for the major problems besetting the world! | John Irving |