Reading Like A Writer: A Guide For People Who Love Books And For Those Who Want To Write Them Quotes
"It’s bad luck to have peacock feathers in the house."
"Rhythm is nearly as important in prose as it is in poetry."
"Read your work aloud... it may... save your life."
"Rhythm gives words a power that cannot be reduced to mere words."
"In April, when Ted Lavender was shot, they used his poncho to wrap him up."
"Each man carried at least one large compress bandage."
"Sometimes when I was starting a new story... I could not get it going."
"The breaking up into paragraphs... has to be done properly for the effect on the reader."
"A new paragraph is a wonderful thing."
"They’re bright, scrubbed, optimistic American kids, and he was a tormented German hypochondriac, contemplating suicide and longing for an abyss deep enough to jump into."
"Their rapturous connection was forged by the shared dream of double suicide, which they finally committed in 1811, in Berlin, on the shore of Lake Wannsee."
"In M—, a large town in northern Italy, the widowed Marquise of O— published the following notice: she was unknowingly in the family way and would marry the father of her child."
"Every word is necessary in establishing the setting of the story and the odd situation of its protagonist."
"She has a spotless reputation and is already a mother—to dispel doubts about her extraordinary claim."
"The ground on which we are standing keeps shifting under our feet, jarring our sense of who the characters are."
"By the end of the novella, the reader might be shocked to find herself wondering why the Marquise is so slow to accept as her husband a man who impregnated her while she was unconscious."
"The story had a better chance of engaging my Utah students than Ulysses or The Making of Americans."
"Kleist has no time for their motives, nor do they, as they struggle to keep up with the pace at which one surprise follows another."
"The calm forbearance with which Mr. Bennet answers his wife’s first question provides an immediate and reasonably accurate idea of his character."
"There’s some wonderful cheese in there." - Mitch
"Things were dead but now they’re picking up." - Simon
"Patience is something we lose. We don’t lose clients—not hopefully, anyway." - Mitch
"I probably won’t see her then. Need to get home and write." - Simon
"You know, I usually charge sixty-five for that—to say hello." - Simon
"I think I’ll just say, ‘Your son came by to see you.’ So long, Simon." - Mitch
"The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you." - Lily
"This has to be quick," she said. "I’m officially at the movies with Mariana." - Jane
"So yours truly thinks she’s pregnant." - Jane
"His technique was well-established: he would let the survivors struggle over the wet stones, and regain their dignity for awhile, before bringing the thundering water down on them again."
"Yesterday he had talked to her for long enough to exhaust her arms, but not for so long that she might drop the linen."
"The ants have done nothing to deserve their fate, nor do their struggles move him to the sort of admiration felt by the boss in the Mansfield story."
"The world being what it is, the poor are cut more often and more deeply."
"You see, to depict horse thieves in 700 lines I must all the time speak and think in their tone and feel in their spirit."
"It is time for writers to admit that nothing in this world makes sense."
"He was eating something spotted with eggs and livers."
"Reading Chekhov, I felt not happy, exactly, but as close to happiness as I knew I was likely to come."
"The more Chekhov we read, the more strongly we feel this."
"But how do you know if you’ve created a rose—or just a weed?"