Plot Quotes - Page 31

• Northern Sweden holds a special kind of magic. It's cold, lonely, and the people are tough and silent, or so the stereotype says. This is Asa Larsson's home turf and I find as much joy in reading her closely observed descriptions of the environment, as in following her intriguing plots.

  Camilla Lackberg

  Lonely, Reading, Home

  "Camilla Lackberg's top 10 Swedish crime novels" by Camilla Lackberg, www.theguardian.com. March 12, 2009.

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• The Illusionist is the storyteller in so many ways. Symbols become his obsession. It's not simply about creating plot - one must also grapple with theme. Nowadays we have a lot of characters and a lot of action but it's hard to sit still and really meditate on meaning, worldviews, concepts, ideologies even. I make my Illusionist do what I've had to do, often with copious amounts of stumbling and frustration. His real humanity comes from being an artist, I think - his creativity is what makes him a man.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Real, Creativity, Character

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I was aware that I had to pay off things in a convincing emotional fashion, that I had to address the lingering plot points in some real tangible sense, and that I had to make this a self-contained novel, in case I'm run over by a bus tomorrow or in case there's no demand for anyone to ever see a sequel. (Two things that I hope don't happen, incidentally.)

  Tod Goldberg

  Running, Fashion, Real

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I don't revise a lot when writing short stories. As far as the novel, I definitely thought more about plot. Honestly, I'm still pretty confused about what "plot" means. I've been reading some of my Goodreads reviews and one reader noted that the The Last Days of California "reads like a short story stretched to the breaking point, padded and brought into novel range..." I don't know what people want, really.

  Mary J. Miller

  Confused, Reading, Mean

  Source: therumpus.net

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• For whatever reason, thus far it's been important to me not to write that kind of collection. Which means that I've spent months playing tic-tac-notecard, trying to get the stories in an order whereby stories that are similar in any given way (diction, narrative stance, setting, plot) are separated by others that aren't.

  Roy Kesey

  Writing, Mean, Order

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Nonfiction ties your hands a bit, and just like writing poetry in rhyme, it can force you to make more brutal decisions in terms of word choice, plot, etc.

  Emily Susan Rapp

  Writing, Hands, Ties

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Europe is being absolutely swamped and destroyed with the crime and the problems, and it could be some sinister plot.

  Donald Trump

  Europe, Problem, Crime

  Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

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• I studied Hitchcock and Josef von Sternberg under Richard Dillard at Hollins, and that year under his tutelage just completely rewired my brain. Both directors combine moral seriousness with great artistry and, certainly in Hitchcock's case, an enormous respect for plot, for its power to enthrall and delight.

  Adam Ross

  Years, Brain, Tutelage

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Though it's marvelously entertaining, and I had fantastic fun writing the book, it's not terribly easily, the material, and it's not all that familiar...although we think it is familiar. The processes of the wonderful narratives are very intricate. It's about the charm - the spellbinding charm - of ingenuity, and it's not so easy to remember the plots or the structure or even the names.

  Marina Warner

  Fun, Book, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Back in my 20s, when I wrote 'A Place of Greater Safety,' the French Revolution novel, I thought, 'I'll always have to write historical novels because I can't do plots.'' But in the six years of writing that novel, I actually learned to write, to invent things.

  Hilary Mantel

  Writing, Historical Novels, Years

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• The pattern of a newspaperman's life is like the plot of 'Black Beauty.' Sometimes he finds a kind master who gives him a dry stall and an occasional bran mash in the form of a Christmas bonus, sometimes he falls into the hands of a mean owner who drives him in spite of spavins and expects him to live on potato peelings.The Sunday World was a dry-stall interlude in my wanderings.

  A. J. Liebling

  Christmas, Fall, Mean

  A. J. Liebling (2005). “Just Enough Liebling: Classic Work by the Legendary New Yorker Writer”, p.14, Macmillan

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• I tend to favour films that have multiple plot and story lines, multiple characters and ensemble pieces.

  Spike Lee

  Character, Ensemble, Stories

  Interview, www.theguardian.com. November 18, 1999.

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• I read a lot of literary theory when I was in graduate school, especially about novels, and the best book I ever read about endings was Peter Brooks' 'Reading for the Plot. '

  Lev Grossman

  Reading, Book, School

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• Physiologically adult humans are not meant to spend an additional 10 years in a school system; their brains map that onto "I have been assigned low tribal status". And so, of course, they plot rebellion - accuse the existing tribal overlords of corruption plot, perhaps to split off their own little tribe in the savanna, not realizing that this is impossible in the Modern World.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  School, Years, Brain

  "Rebelling Within Nature". lesswrong.com. July 13, 2008.

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• The meek shall inherit the earth - a 6 foot plot above them.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Feet, Earth, Humour

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• In a 22-page comic, figuring an average of four to five panels a page and a couple of full-page shots, a writer has maybe a hundred panels at most to tell a story, so every panel he wastes conveying a.) something I already know, b.) something that's a cute gag but does nothing to reveal plot or character, or c.) something I don't need to know is a demonstration of lousy craft.

  Mark Waid

  Cute, Couple, Book

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• I see this with experienced writers, too: They worry so much about the plot that they lose sight of the characters. They lose sight of why they are telling the story. They don't let the characters actually speak. Characters will start to dictate the story in sometimes surprising, emotional, and funny ways. If the writers are not open to those surprises, they're going to strangle the life, spark, or spirit out of their work.

  Brian Michael Bendis

  Book, Character, Emotional

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• The art of the writer, like that of the player, is attained by slow degrees. The power of distinguishing and discriminating comick characters, or of filling tragedy with poetical images, must be the gift of nature, which no instruction nor labour can supply; but the art of dramatick disposition, the contexture of the scenes, the involution of the plot, the expedients of suspension, and the strategems of surprise, are to be learned by practice.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Character, Writing

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy, Francis Pearson Walesby (1825). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D..: The Adventurer and Idler”, p.223

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• Every couple I know has side-by-side grave plots, but when we do it we're the biggest weirdos on the block.

  Billy Bob Thornton

  Couple, Block, Sides

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• To this day, I get rewrite offers where they say: 'We feel this script needs work with character, dialogue, plot and tone,' and when you ask what's left, they say: 'Well, the typing is very good.'

  John Sayles

  Character, Needs, Scripts

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• Believe it, my good friend, to love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in the world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues; and if I mistake not, you have as much of it as I ever met with in anybody.

  Anthony Collins

  Mistake, Believe, Good Friend

  Charles Bradlaugh, John Watts, Anthony Collins (2012). “Half-Hours with the Freethinkers”, p.69, The Floating Press

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• I'm frustrated when I see movies in which I feel like the plot is being told to me instead of shown to me.

  Channing Tatum

  Frustrated, Feels

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• Any writer would rather dig into character than dig into fancy plots.

  Michael Connelly

  Character, Fancy

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• People have really long attention spans, and they love complicated plots. TV series are giving the audience what they want.

  Kevin Spacey

  Long, People, Giving

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• Here's the plot of 'Interstellar.' Refugees - they're known as Democrats - they're looking for a new planet.

  David Letterman

  Planets, Democrat, Refugee

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