Plot Quotes - Page 18

• Disturbing and intriguing. The Synchronicity Factor is much more than a page-turning thriller, for its remarkable plot is rooted in real science and real history.

  Peter Lovesey

  Real, Pages Turning, Intriguing

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• Bigotrys birthplace is the sinister back room of the mind where plots and schemes are hatched for the persecution and oppression of other human beings.

  Bayard Rustin

  Birth Place, Mind, Rooms

  Bayard Rustin (1971). “Down the line”, Quadrangle-New York Times Book Co.

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• I keep losing and regaining my equilibrium, which is the basic plot of all popular fiction. And I myself am a work of fiction.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Fiction, Losing, Equilibrium

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• You can wipe your feet on me, twist my motives around all you like, you can dump millstones on my head and drown me in the river, but you can’t get me out of the story. I’m the plot, babe, and don’t ever forget it.

  Margaret Atwood

  Rivers, Feet, Twists

  Margaret Atwood (2011). “Good Bones and Simple Murders”, p.11, Nan A. Talese

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• He obtained from Congress the right to borrow from the people by selling to it the 'bonds' of States ... and the Government and the nation escaped the plots of the foreign financiers. They understood at once, that the United States would escape their grip. The death of Lincoln was resolved upon.

  Otto von Bismarck

  Government, People, United States

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• The high office of the President has been used to foment a plot to destroy the American's freedom and before I leave office, I must inform the citizens of this plight.

  John F. Kennedy

  Nwo, Office, President

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• If my writing comes to a halt, I head to the shops: I find them very inspirational. And if I get into real trouble with my plot, I go out for a pizza with my husband.

  Sophie Kinsella

  Husband, Real, Writing

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• Two things I do well in books are sex and violence, but I don't want gratuitous sex or violence. The sex and violence are only as graphic as need be. And never included unless it furthers the plot or character development

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Sex, Book, Character

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• There are thirty-two ways to write a story, and I’ve used every one, but there is only one plot – things are not as they seem.

  Jim Thompson

  Writing, Two, Stories

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• Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don't then worry about plot or themes. These things will come in almost automatically because the characters are now pulling the story.

  Chinua Achebe

  Character, Worry, Stories

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• Blair liked to think of herself as a hopeless romantic in the style of old movie actresses like Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe. She was always coming up with plot devices for the movie she was starring in at the moment, the movie that was her life.

  Cecily von Ziegesar

  Thinking, Hopeless Romantic, Style

  Cecily von Ziegesar (2003). “Gossip Girl: #1: A Novel by Cecily von Ziegesar”, p.11, Hachette UK

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• I learned everything I know about plot from Dame Agatha (Christie).

  Connie Willis

  Dames, Christie, Knows

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• You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story, dallying with the details or following the course of the plot, you enter into characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart beating beneath their costumes.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Heart, Character, Forget Everything

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• To plot is to live. […] We start out lives in chaos, in babble. As we surge up into the world, we try to devise a shape, a plan. There is dignity in this. Your whole life is a plot, a scheme, a diagram. It is a failed scheme but that's not the point. To plot is to affirm life, to seek shape and control. Even after death, most particularly after death, the search continues. Burial rites are an attempt to complete the scheme, in ritual. Picture a state funeral, Jack. It is all precision, detail, order, design. The nation holds its breath. - (WN 292)

  Don DeLillo

  Order, Design, Funeral

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• Chris Claremont once said of Alan Moore, "if he could plot, we'd all have to get together and kill him." Which utterly misses the most compelling part of Alan's writing, the way he develops and expresses ideas and character. Plot does not define story. Plot is the framework within which ideas are explored and personalities and relationships are unfolded.

  Warren Ellis

  Writing, Character, Ideas

  "Bad Signal". Comic book by Warren Ellis, 2003.

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• The lives of individuals of the human race form a constant plot, in which every attempt to isolate one piece of living that has a meaning separate from the rest-for example, the meeting of two people, which will become decisive for both-must bear in mind that each of the two brings with himself a texture of events, environments, other people, and that from the meeting, in turn, other stories will be derived which will break off from their common story.

  Italo Calvino

  Race, Break Off, Two

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• I went to bed last night utterly dejected; I thought I was never going to amount to anything, and that you had thrown away your money for nothing. But what do you think? I woke up this morning with a beautiful new plot in my head, and I've been going about all day planning my characters, just as happy as I could be. No one can ever accuse me of being a pessimist! If I had a husband and twelve children swallowed by an earthquake one day, I'd bob up smilingly the next morning and commence to look for another set. ~Jershua Abbott

  Jean Webster

  Beautiful, Morning, Children

  Jean Webster (2016). “Daddy Long-Legs and Dear Enemy: Illustrated”, p.102, Jester House Publishing

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• I lost the plot for a while then. And I lost the subplot, the script, the soundtrack, the intermission, my popcorn, the credits, and the exit sign.

  Nick Hornby

  Popcorn, Credit, Scripts

  Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.34, Penguin

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• Life has no plot. It is by far more interesting than anything you can say about it.

  Erica Jong

  Interesting

  FaceBook post by Erica Jong from Jan 19, 2014

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• No one would have known, from how he held my hand, [that] over the years of heartache he had hatched a plot to change my life forever. He held his grip and would not let me go. I do not know what joins the parts of an atom, but it seems what binds one human to another is pain.

  Andrew Sean Greer

  Pain, Hands, Years

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• Carney is like a graveyard where everyone already owns their plots and has built houses on top of them.

  Holly Black

  House, Graveyard, Built

  Holly Black (2010). “White Cat”, p.36, Simon and Schuster

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• I picked up one of the books and flipped through it. Don't get me wrong, I like reading. But some books should come with warning labels: Caution: contains characters and plots guaranteed to induce sleepiness. Do not attempt to operate heavy machinery after ingesting more than one chapter. Has been known to cause blindness, seizures and a terminal loathing of literature. Should only be taken under the supervision of a highly trained English teacher. Preferably one who grades on the curve.

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Teacher, Book, Taken

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• The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.

  Terry Pratchett

  Life, Inspire, Purpose

  "Moving Pictures". Book by Terry Pratchett, www.theguardian.com. 1990.

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• I love soap operas - the stories, the plots! And I love the game shows and the courtroom dramas and the detectives - Jessica Fletcher, 'Columbo,' 'Perry Mason,' 'L.A. Law.' Any sense of guilt appeals to me in a television program - a sense of guilt, or a sense of making a lot of money.

  Peter Ackroyd

  Drama, Law, Games

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• All fiction is about people, unless it's about rabbits pretending to be people. It's all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that's what we call 'the plot'.

  Margaret Atwood

  Moving, Character, Mean

  "Do keep up". Interview with Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. April 12, 2004.

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