Story Quotes (page 140)
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...[W]riting stories not only involved secrecy, it also gave her all the pleasures of miniaturisation. A world could be made in five pages....The childhood of a spoiled prince could be framed within half a page, a moonlit dash through sleepy villages was one rhythmically empathic sentence, falling in love would be achieved in a single word—a glance.
Ian Mcewan
The setting sun burned the sky pink and orange in the same bright hues as surfers' bathing suits. It was beautiful deception, Bosch thought, as he drove north on the Hollywood Freeway to home. Sunsets did that here. Made you forget it was the smog that made their colors so brilliant, that behind every pretty picture there could be an ugly story.
Michael Connelly
The best stories I have heard were pointless, the best books those whose plot I can never remember, the best individuals those whom I never get anywhere with. Though it has been practised on me time and again I never cease to marvel how it happens that with certain individuals whom I know, within a few minutes after greeting them we are embarked on an endless voyage comparable in feeling and trajectory only to the deep middle dream which the practised dreamer slips into like a bone slips into...
Henry Miller
Sometimes we gotta be brave even when we're scared. We gotta not let being scared keep us from thinkin' straight. That's all brave is, boy, when you come right down to it, not lettin' the fear get you so turned around you start doin' stupid things, instead of what you know you ought to do." -From 'Night Story 1973' by PZB & CRK
Poppy Z. Brite
One of the most moving narratives of modern history is the story of how men and women languishing under various forms of oppression came to acquire, often at great personal cost, the sort of technical knowledge necessary for them to understand their own condition more deeply, and so acquire some of the theoretical armoury essential to change it. ... There is no reason why literary critics should not turn to autobiography or anecdotalism, or simply slice up their texts and deliver them to...
Terry Eagleton
Trout sat back and thought about the conversation. He shaped it into a story, which he never got around to writing until he was an old, old man. It was about a planet where the language kept turning into pure music, because the creatures there were so enchanted by sounds. Words became musical notes. Sentences became melodies. They were useless as conveyors of information, because nobody knew or cares what the meanings of words were anymore. So leaders in government and commerce, in order to...
Kurt Vonnegut
ATHENA: There are two sides to this dispute. I've heard only one half the argument. (...) So you two parties, summon your witnesses, set out your proofs, with sworn evidence to back your stories. Once I've picked the finest men in Athens, I'll return. They'll rule fairly in this case, bound by a sworn oath to act with justice.
Aeschylus
I agree, it is a pity I never saw the pfifltriggi at home. I know nearly enough about them to "fake" a visit to them as an episode in the story, but I don't think we ought to introduce any mere fiction. "True in substance" sounds all very well on earth, but I can't imagine myself explaining it to Oyarsa, and I have a shrewd suspicion (see my last letter) that I have not heard the end of him. Anyway, why should our "readers" (you seem to know the devil of a lot about them!) who are so...
C. S. Lewis
Christmas poem to a man in jailhello Bill Abbott: I appreciate your passing around my books injail there, my poems and stories. if I can lighten the load for some of those guys withmy books, fine. but literature, you know, is difficult for theaverage man to assimilate (and for the unaverage man too); I don't like most poetry, for example, so I write mine the way I like to read it.
Charles Bukowski