Plot Quotes - Page 33

• Most crime fiction plots are not ambitious enough for me. I want something really labyrinthine with clues and puzzles that will reward careful attention.

  Sophie Hannah

  Want Something, Ambitious, Rewards

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• Consider, for example, and you will find that almost all the transactions in the time of Vespasian differed little from those of the present day. You there find marrying and giving in marriage, educating children, sickness, death, war, joyous holidays, traffic, agriculture, flatterers, insolent pride, suspicions, laying of plots, longing for the death of others, newsmongers, lovers, misers, men canvassing far the consulship and for the kingdom; yet all these passed away, and are nowhere.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Children, War, Holiday

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• In our society mothers take the place elsewhere occupied by the Fates, the System, Negroes, Communism or Reactionary Imperialist Plots; mothers go on getting blamed until they're eighty, but shouldn't take it personally.

  Katharine Whitehorn

  Mother, Fate, Goes On

  Observations ch. 10 (1970)

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• If often happens too, both in courts and in cabinets, that there are two things going on together,--a main plot and an under-plot; and he that understands only one of them will, in all probability, be the dupe of both. A mistress may rule a monarch, but some obscure favorite may rule the mistress.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Two, Mistress, Together

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.56

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• When, and how, and at what stage of our development did spirituality and our strange notions of religion arise? the need for worship which is nothing more than our frightened refuge into propitiation of a Creator we do not understand? A detective story, the supreme Who-done-it, written in indecipherable hieroglyphics, no Rosetta stone supplied by the consummate Mystifier to tease us poor fumbling unravellers of his plot.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Women, Religion, Needs

  Victoria Sackville-West, Vita Sackville-West (1985). “No Signposts in the Sea”, Penguin Group USA

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• As a creator of character his peculiarity is that he creates wherever his eyes rest ... With such a power at his command Dickens made his books blaze up, not by tightening the plot or sharpening the wit, but by throwing another handful of people upon the fire.

  Virginia Woolf

  Book, Character, Eye

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.3106, Delphi Classics

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• I write poems about relationships, love relationships, and I'm not able to do that all the time. I could go two years without writing poems, and then write a dozen. Having a novel to work on, with the intricate puzzle of character and plot to work out, is satisfying for the time there is no poetry.

  May Sarton

  Writing, Character, Years

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• [On Edna Ferber's Ice Palace] ... the book, which is going to be a movie, has the plot and characters of a book which is going to be a movie.

  Dorothy Parker

  Book, Character, Ice

  Dorothy Parker (2004). “Dorothy Parker in Her Own Words”, Taylor Trade Publishing

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• [Epitaph:] Involved in a plot.

  Dorothy Parker

  Epitaph, Involved

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• when ... I've thought of madness, it seems most easily explained to me as poetry in action. A life of symbol rather than reality. On paper one can understand Gulliver, or Kafka, or Dante. But let a man go about behaving as if he were a giant or a midget, or caught in a cosmic plot directed at himself, or in heaven or hell, and we feel horror - we want to disavow him to proclaim him as far removed as possible from ourselves.

  Helen Eustis

  Reality, Men, Heaven

  Helen Eustis (2015). “The Horizontal Man: A Library of America eBook Classic”, p.245, Library of America

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• The absurdist is concerned with the search for meaning in the Universe. He believes this search to be meaningless--hence the disintegration of plot, character, and language in absurdist drama. Order is a falsehood that we, God, those who came before us, have imposed on a random universe. However, the absurdist is confronted with a curious paradox: though he believes the Universe to be meaningless, he cannot abandon the search for meaning--or he will die.

  Walter Wykes

  Drama, Believe, Character

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• A human being needs only a small plot of ground on which to be happy, and even less to lie beneath.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Lying, Needs, Humans

  Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Marcelle Clements (2013). “The Sorrows of Young Werther and Selected Writings”, p.60, Penguin

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• It takes a fierce devotion to defend your artistic space, and eternal vigilance over it, because the needs of others will grow like vines in your little plot and claim it back for the jungle.

  Judith Ortiz Cofer

  Space, Needs, Vines

  Judith Ortiz Cofer (2000). “Woman in Front of the Sun: On Becoming a Writer”, p.88, University of Georgia Press

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• I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession. I love all of it, thinking up the plots, getting to know the kids in the story, their parents, backyards, pizza toppings.

  Caroline B. Cooney

  Kids, Writing, Thinking

  Caroline B. Cooney (2012). “Twins”, p.188, Open Road Media

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• I'm one of the lucky writers: plots come easily to me

  Caroline B. Cooney

  Lucky

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• The one thing I would like more credit for is being part of a movement which involves recognising the importance of plot and asserting that books of literary worth could be written that had plots.

  Scott Turow

  Book, Credit, Movement

  "To hell with Perry Mason". The Observer Interview, www.theguardian.com. November 24, 2002.

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• Music, I find, gets you out of a trap [when screenwriting], because it speaks to your emotions directly, it's an abstract thing, it's not concerned with plot or story. And so music really helps - often I'll listen to the music and just write anything, just to get through.

  Tony Grisoni

  Writing, Stories, Helping

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• To save my son, I would plot with the devil himself.

  Philippa Gregory

  Son, Devil, My Son

  Philippa Gregory (2013). “The White Queen”, p.326, Simon and Schuster

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• Use what you know. Draw from it. It doesnt always mean plot or fact. It means capturing a truth from your experiencing it, expressing values you personally feel deep down in your core.

  Andrew Stanton

  Mean, Facts, Use

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• The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining super capitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control.... Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent.

  Larry McDonald

  Mean, Government, Order

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• We're trained to see only male or female and to plot people into those categories when they actually don't fit neatly at all. But if we pause, watch and listen closely we'll see the multiplicity of ways in which people are sexed and gendered. There exists a range of personal identifications around woman, man, in-between-we don't even have names or pronouns that reflect that in between place but people certainly live in it.

  Minnie Bruce Pratt

  Men, Names, People

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• Jeff Carver is a hard sf writer who gets it right-his science and his people are equally convincing. NEPTUNE CROSSING combines his strengths, from a chilling look at alien machine intelligence, to cutting-edge chaos theory, to the pangs of finite humans in the face of the infinite. If you like intriguing ideas delivered in an exciting plot, this is your meat.

  Gregory Benford

  Cutting, Ideas, People

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• I have a book coming out in September, for example, where the plot concerns counterfeiting, and I had to do a lot of research on that. Or on any legal matters, for example, I have to do a lot of research online.

  Ed McBain

  Book, Example, Research

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• The CIA has a plot...they've used before to get rid of world leaders. Only problem...is convincing Hussein...to fly to Dallas.

  Bill Hicks

  Leader, Dallas, World

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• I don't think plot as a plot means much today. I'd say that everybody has seen every plot twenty times. What they haven't seen is characters and their relation to one another. I don't worry much about plot anymore.

  Howard Hawks

  Character, Mean, Thinking

  Howard Hawks, Scott Breivold (2006). “Howard Hawks: Interviews”, p.41, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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