Category: quotes

quotes

Writing Quotes to Inspire

We used to be close, like a paper chain family inextricably linked….Now we’re scattered across the globe. Nothing to link us together.                                                 The House We Grew Up In  by Lisa Jewell A thousand tiny strokes of fortune touch us on our way, to move or change us.                                                 Fortunes Hand by Belva Plain Love wasn’t a great burning brushfire that swept across your soul and charred you…it was everyday moments laid out like bricks, one atop the other.                                                 Angel Falls by Kristin Hannah Time marches on, turning out hopes and dreams into memories.                                                 Twelve Little Cakes by...

Quotes on Writing

quotes

Quotes on Writing

Readers and writers enjoy a good book. These quotes are reasons that may happen. Enjoy! A novel is a question, not an answer.                                                 Richard Peck A human being is nothing but a story with skin wrapped around it.                                            Fred Allen Setting details are multipurpose…When a reader first opens a story, setting is the doorway through which he or she ventures into the story events.                                                 Jessica Page Morrell

Characters Must Grow and Change

details in writing / musings / quotes

Characters Must Grow and Change

Characters are the focus of most novels. Here are two examples from well known authors that demonstrate important pats-on-the-back to characters that engage readers. (1) Show what’s “on the line” in the character’s lives including risks, obstacles and needs for change. In Distant Shore, Kristin Hannah wrote: In those days he’d promised her the moon and the stars, vowed to love her forever. He’d meant it too. Believed in it. They hadn’t done anything wrong, either of them. They simply hadn’t understood how long forever was. (p.118) (2) Show growth across the story for secondary characters and their subplots In...

Quotes Worth a Second Look

quotes / reading

Quotes Worth a Second Look

The measure of a man comes down to moments spread out like dots on the canvas of life. Kristin Hannah, Angel Falls p. 149 Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward.   Soren Kierkegaard She stood in the hallway,blinking back the latest rush of tears, and wrestled with the monster-sized ball of stubbornness and terror that stuck in her throat. Susan Donovan  Knock Me Off My Feet  p.277 She developed a profound desire to stay as if her center of gravity was so low it connected her directly to this particular patch of earth. Ann Patchett ...

Revealing Quotes : A Glimpse into Authors’ Thinking

quotes

Revealing Quotes : A Glimpse into Authors’ Thinking

 “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” “You have to write the book that wants to be written. And, if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then write it for children.” “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter/computer and bleed.” “What really knocks me out is when I’m done reading a book, I wish the author was a  friend of mine and I could call him/her up and talk about how the...

Quotes Worth a Second Look

quotes

Quotes Worth a Second Look

When I read, I write down lines that impact me. Here are a few for you to ponder.   He’d never thought much about silence, but now he knew its every shape and contour. It was a cheap glass jar that trapped old voices and kept them fresh.  Angel Falls by Kristin Hannah p.111 We must know how to design our lives. We are all artists and each day is a canvas. Paris Letters by Janice MacLeod  p. 204 I’m getting tired of my own innocence. The Water is Wide by Pat Conroy p.9 We lead out lives like water flowing...

Quote about Writers

musings / quotes / writing

Quote about Writers

For every writer… there is always the impulse, realized or unrealized, that binds us one to another through the power of language. Every time a person writes, for public or not, he or she is connected to all who have ever felt that magnificent charge of communication through the written word- whether carved in hieroglyphics or glowing in code across our computer…there will always be the brilliant conspiracy between author and reader. Betsy Lerner The Forest for the Trees

Quotes to Ponder

musings / quotes

Quotes to Ponder

Small ideas often make stories more memorable and often give us pause: If I cannot accept the real as real, how can I accept a dream as a dream? Night Gardening by E.L. Swann comment attributed to the 12th century priest/monk Saigyo   The grooves of his life were deep and rigid. Remember Me Like This by Bret Anthony Johnston   It turns out impatience is the thief of serenity. Chicken Chronicles by Alice Walker   (talking about life events) … the kind that looks like nothing except through time’s rear view mirror. The Walk by Richard Paul Evans  ...

What Colors Rule Your World This Day?

details in writing / musings / quotes

What Colors Rule Your World This Day?

Color: the presence of life as seen through different lenses. Each day we select the way we’ll see our world. The following quotes provide different views/moods/images within a story.   The brilliant sun had disappeared, its last flickering rays painting the rim of the sky with liquid crimson, bleeding into saffron and amethyst and the palest lilac before dropping down behind the dim horizon. The Women in His Life by B.T. Bradford p.167   The mist enclosed them, making straight-ahead visibility almost non-existent. Up above was another story; the fog was pinned to the rivers and lagoons, barely higher than...

Quotes to Ponder

quotes

Quotes to Ponder

When I read, I am often stopped by a line or a paragraph in a book that triggers a sensation in my brain. Maybe some of these will provide something for you to ponder. Rex felt as if they were moving through space, that they were giant spacemen, threading in and out among trillions of tiny, luminous stars. (they are in snow)    The Virgin of Small Plains by Nancy Pickard, p.19   A rainbow of colored umbrellas punctuated by black bumbers favored by the suited class.   Assault & Pepper by Leslie Budewitz, p. 214   Words or fists, it didn’t...