Famous Quotes & Sayings

Jack Vance

The story was such that I couldn't make a graceful ending and then make a graceful new beginning. I could have, but I didn't want to. So, it isn't the most graceful way of writing a story. This new story is, I think, is pretty good stuff. I'm pleased with it anyway.

Kevin Williamson

Typically in horror films the character just services the plot, and you really are just going from 'point a' to 'point b,' just so that you can end up at 'point c.' They are just sort of stick characters. That's just not interesting to me.

Beverly Cleary

The exterior circumstances have certainly changed for many children. The world is not the safe place it was when I was growing up.

John Gray

Men are motivated and empowered when they feel needed. Women are motivated and empowered when they feel cherished.

Daniel Yergin

Within four or five years the US might be getting 10 percent of its gasoline from ethanol - that would be like creating a new Indonesia.

Henry David Thoreau

What's the use of a fine house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?

Zane Grey

Love of man for woman - love of woman for man. That's the nature, the meaning, the best of life itself.

Robert Sheckley

So I try to stick with the structure, make the sentences work, and not to follow one sentence of 114 words with another of the same length.

Elizabeth Moon

So I didn't think it was odd for women to have technological knowledge and yet be mothers, and very devoted family members and have friends.

Jack Vance

So I'll write it, and then I'll find out that I actually wrote something that is utterly useless. You can't use it in the story and it doesn't fit. So I just throw it away. I've done that countless times.

Dick Bruna

Right at the beginning, I didn't know if Miffy was a boy or girl.

David Guterson

People were going to wonder about me, about who I am and what makes me tick, and with time I decided that it didn't really bother me to share that.

Dan Simmons

But it's not just a game of finding literary references.

Mary McCarthy

Bureacracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.

Mickey Spillane

But at my age, you start to get tired.

Sarah Zettel

My father was a major SF fan in the '40s and '50s, so the house was full of SF books. That's where I got my start and I never looked back.

Gregg Easterbrook

Neither Aristotle nor the Framers were known for self-indulgence. All believed that happiness is a legitimate goal in life; perhaps, one of the reasons we are here.

Jhumpa Lahiri

For years, I sort of would try to write a story that somehow fit the title. And I don't think it happened for maybe another four years that I actually thought of a story, the plot of a story that corresponded to that phrase.

Henry David Thoreau

If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music in which he hears, however measured, or far away.

I don't think you can say that the talks between us and the military have not yet resumed. I think you could say that dialogue has not yet started.

If a book's moving well, or I was interrupted over six million times through the day, I'll usually go back and write for another hour or two.

Raymond E. Feist

I enjoyed the "people" aspect of sales, but the haggling, the rinding, the tedium... thanks, but I'll keep on writing if I'm permitted.

Tavis Smiley

Give that to me so I can get out of here.

Joseph Campbell

God is a metaphor for that which trancends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that.

Vincent Bugliosi

If the Tate premises, ladies and gentlemen, did not symbolize the establishment to Charles Manson, no residence, no premises, ever would.

I always figure I can have the Midwest one way or the other. Because it's my background, it ought to be a voice that comes easily.

Laura Hillenbrand

I was starstruck and completely confused; making a film of this story hadn't even occurred to me, and I hadn't written a single line of the book yet. I had no idea how this man knew anything about my book proposal.

Henry David Thoreau

I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

Edith Wharton

If we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time.

SF has at least the advantage of not depending on preconceptions.

Sara Paretsky

Sisters in Crime now has more than 4,000 members worldwide.

Since, however, the reduced surplus value is to be distributed among them in like manner, the modification of their respective parts in the production of surplus value must find expression in a modification of the prices.

Richard Grant

I loved being asked 2,000 questions a day, storyboarding every move, knowing as though by instinct exactly where the camera had to be, because it was my story.