There are many ways to be free. One of them is to transcend reality by imagination, as I try to do.
– Anaïs Nin
Category: Quotable
Quotable 64
The writer is both a sadist and a masochist. We create people we love, and then we torture them. The more we love them, and the more cleverly we torture them along the lines of their greatest vulnerability and fear, the better the story. Sometimes we try to protect them from getting booboos that are too big. Don’t. This is your protagonist, not your kid.
– Janet Fitch
Quotable 63
If some people read my fiction and see it as fundamentally about philosophical ideas, what it probably means is that these are pieces where the characters are not as alive and interesting as I meant them to be.
– David Foster Wallace
Quotable 62
Universal human experiences are a foundation of highly successful fantasy, mystery, historical, literary, women’s and romance fiction. Even literature’s most distinctive protagonists may seem like no others, but in fact what they go through resonates with us all.
– Donald Maass
Quotable 61
There’s only one person who needs a glass of water oftener than a small child tucked in for the night, and that’s a writer sitting down to write.
– Mignon McLaughlin
Quotable 60
Think of your readers as gifted third graders – if you bore them, they’ll start burning ants. If you challenge them, they’ll follow you anywhere.
– John Brandon
Quotable 59
Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.
– John Adams
Quotable 58
You can get help from teachers, but you are going to have to learn a lot by yourself, sitting alone in a room.
– Theodor Seuss Geisel
Quotable 57
Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.
– Elie Wiesel
Quotable 56
We think in language. And so the quality of our thoughts and ideas can only be as good as the quality of our language.
– George Carlin