Famous Quotes & Sayings

Carrie Fisher

I have a mess in my head sometimes, and there's something very satisfying about putting it into words. Certainly it's not something that you're in charge of, necessarily, but writing about it, putting it into your words, can be a very powerful experience.

Carl Rogers

Powerful is our need to be known, really known by ourselves and others, even if only for a moment.

Carl Sagan

Science is merely an extremely powerful method of winnowing what's true from what feels good.

Carl Sagan

These are all cases of proved or presumptive baloney. A deception arises, sometimes innocently but collaboratively, sometimes with cynical premeditation. Usually the victim is caught up in a powerful emotion -- wonder, fear, greed, grief. Credulous acceptance of baloney can cost you money; that's what P. T. Barnum meant when he said, 'There's a sucker born every minute.' But it can be much more dangerous than that, and when governments and societies lose the capacity for critical thinking, the results can be catastrophic -- however sympathetic we may be to those who have bought the baloney.

Bill Bryson

So, if people didn’t settle down to take up farming, why then did they embark on this entirely new way of living? We have no idea – or actually, we have lots of ideas, but we don’t know if any of them are right. According to Felipe Fernández-Armesto, at least thirty-eight theories have been put forward to explain why people took to living in communities: that they were driven to it by climatic change, or by a wish to stay near their dead, or by a powerful desire to brew and drink beer, which could only be indulged by staying in one place.

Arnold Schoenberg

I am the slave of an internal power more powerful than my education.

Aron Ralston

Saying farewell is also a bold and powerful beginning.

Bill Budge

I have a really powerful urge to see things work.

Bill Bryson

Hardly anyone ever leaves. This is because Des Moines is the most powerful hypnotic known to man. Outside town there is a big sign that says, WELCOME TO DES MOINES. THIS IS WHAT DEATH IS LIKE. There isn't really. I just made that up. But the place does get a grip on you.

Martha Grimes

Intricately plotted, beautifully paced, The Music of the Spheres is an elegant historical novel rich in detail, at times Dickensian in its description of London. Elizabeth Redfern has made an exciting debut.

Jeanette Winterson

I hated historical novels with fluttering cloaks.

Matthew Tobin Anderson

I feel like it's hard to get into historical novels where you know what the story is far too well.

Mary Pope Osborne

The historical novel gives us perspective on our modern lives and helps us connect with the story, which we are continuing ourselves.

Lion Feuchtwanger

After closely examining my conscience, I venture to state that in my historical novels I intended the content to be just as modern and up-to-date as in the contemporary ones.

Robert Anton Wilson

[My wife] liked to collect old encyclopedias from second-hand bookstores, and at one point we had eight of them. When I wrote my first historical novel---back in 1980, before I was online---I used them often as a research tool. For instance, I learned that the Bastille was either 90 feet high or 100 feet or 120 feet. This led me to formulate Wilson's 22nd Law: 'Certitude belongs exclusively to those who only look in one encyclopedia.'

Ruth Ozeki

People have always heard voices. Sometimes they're called shamans, sometimes they're called mad, and sometimes they're called fiction writers. I always feel lucky that I live in a culture where fiction writing is legal and not seen as pathology.

Peter Morgan

Generally, I read nonfiction. There's very little fiction that I enjoy enough to spend my time reading. I am generally a nonfiction guy.

Julia Glass

I wonder if it's in the nature of fiction writers to never quite see their own lives as 'real,' since we are always making stuff up!

David Guterson

I was totally absorbed in the real world, the politics, the history, the news, and I just couldn't find my way into the fictional world... When I finally could return to writing the novel, it was in fits and starts.

Paolo Bacigalupi

When I think about myself as a writer, for sure I am a science fiction writer. The tools of extrapolation, the tools of anticipating the future - those are science fictional questions.

Sarah Dessen

I have a tendency to embellish: I think it's a weakness of fiction writers. Once you know how to make a story better, it's hard not to do it all the time.

Shaun Cassidy

I think it has science-fiction elements, but I would say that overall it's a mystery.

David Morrell

There are no inferior types of fiction, only inferior practitioners of them.

David Mitchell

Implausible truth can serve one better than plausible fiction