Famous Quotes & Sayings

John Hawkes

Because of my father's dislocated life, I knew intuitively that I wanted to have as few jobs as possible by the time I was married.

He took pride in belonging to the world's most exclusive club: the United States Senate.

Edmund White

But if all these things were the bits of tinsel and straw I made my nest out of, the way I felt while I worked was strangely different.

Armistead Maupin

But I love to travel with my partner, reading, sitting in the garden, smoking dope, and going to movies. Not necessarily in that order.

I didn't for a moment doubt the choice, but if life is ever fearsome, it is truly fearsome then.

I didn't know what kind of jobs, because how was I prepared? At best, I would be an AB in English.

Mother considered a press conference on a par with a visit to a cage of cobras.

My first book took five years to write and I made $1,000 on it. The second took three years and I made $3,000. All this time I was a housewife being supported by a husband. I was very lucky.

One must always keep one's government under control.

Russell Hoban

Language is an archeological vehicle... the language we speak is a whole palimpsest of human effort and history.

Dorothy Gilman

People need dreams, there's as much nourishment in 'em as food.

My mother wanted very much to play tennis; she wanted, most of all, to be a singer and play the piano.

The antitrust division has been left in very good shape by Joel Klein. I've found a number of enforcement issues I'm happy to pursue.

I was not typical. Whatever typical or normal is, I was somehow separated and different.

Betty Smith

Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time.

Betty Smith

Look at everthing as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.

Jonathan Franzen

I was unwise enough to actually mention this in public a few times, and in fact to point out that there were two versions of the book now. One of them had somebody else's name on the cover, one had my name on the cover.

Patricia Highsmith

I think J.D. Salinger is correct in granting no interviews, and in making no speeches.

Donna Tartt

People always want to call me a Southern writer but though I grew up in the South, I don't feel that the label quite fits my work.

Richard Wright

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.

Richard Wright

Men simply copied the realities of their hearts when they built prisons.

Richard Wright

I'd like to see the bay cleaned up before I die.

Booth Tarkington

He had not yet learned that the only safe male rebuke to a scornful female is to stay away from her - especially if that is what she desires.

Booth Tarkington

Cherish all your happy moments; they make a fine cushion for old age.

Ellen Glasgow

No life is so hard that you cannot make it easier by the way you take it.

It's also possible to have two third person singular points of view, as represented by two characters through whose eyes the story is told in alternating chapters, say.

Vesco was always on the trail in search of money.

But whatever the POV, and the difficulty of forcing the action into a particular frame, stay within it.

But if two's company, three's a crowd - and that demands the omniscient point of view.

Understanding POV is essential, or ought to be.

The universal narrator knows all and can enter a character's head any time he chooses.

To fake it is to stand guard over emptiness.

The main advantage of the omniscient approach is that it's the easiest to handle. That's the major reason so many writers select it.