Archive for category Quotes
Quotes of the Week
Posted by Allen Jones in Quotes on October 20th, 2009
Only the best art can order the chaotic tumble of events. Only the best can realign chaos to suggest better the chaos and order it will become.
– Joseph Conrad
Let them think what they like, but I didn’t mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank – but that’s not the same thing.
– Joseph Conrad
Quote of the Week
Posted by Allen Jones in Quotes on July 31st, 2009
Now lend me your ears. Here is Creative Writing 101:
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time is wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story gets pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
— Kurt Vonnegut
Quote of the Week
Posted by Allen Jones in Quotes on April 29th, 2009
“Hard, hard work, excavation and digging, mining, moling through tunnels, heaving, pushing, moving rock, working, working, working, working, panting, hauling, hoisting. And none of this work is seen from the outside. It’s internally done. It happens because you are powerless and unable to get anywhere, to obtain justice or have requital, and therefore in yourself you labor, you wage and combat, settle scores, remember insults, fight, reply, deny, blab, denounce, triumph, outwit, overcome, vindicate, cry, persist, absolve, die and rise again. All by yourself! Where is everybody? Inside your breast and skin, the entire cast.”
Saul Bellow
