Plot Quotes - Page 35

• Baseball is part of America's plot, part of America's mysterious, underlying design-the plot in which we all conspire and collude, the plot of the story of our national life.

  Albert Allen Bartlett

  Baseball, America, Design

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• The Prime Minister seems now to be basing his re-election campaign on this plot line. He is saying to the Australian people, look out, the baddies behind you - hiss, boo and whatever you do, don't vote Labor. This political parody of pantomime is looking and sounding desperate.

  Julia Gillard

  Plot Lines, People, Political

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• It is fatal to know too much at the outcome: boredom comes as quickly to the traveler who knows his route as to the novelist who is over certain of his plot.

  Paul Theroux

  Hero, Boredom, Novelists

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• Satan cannot deny but that great wonders have been wrought by prayer. As the spirit of prayer goes up, so his kingdom goes down. Satan's strategems against prayer are three. First, if he can, he will keep thee from prayer. If that be not feasible, secondly, he will strive to interrupt thee in prayer. And, thirdly, if that plot takes not, he will labour to hinder the success of thy prayer.

  William Gurnall

  Prayer, Three, Kingdoms

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• Through all the drama - whether damned or not - Love gilds the scene, and women guide the plot.

  Richard Brinsley Sheridan

  Drama, Scene, Guides

  "The Rivals". Comedy of manners by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Epilogue), January 17, 1775.

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• I have suggested that behind almost all myth lies the mono-plot of the game of hide-and-seek.

  Alan Watts

  Lying, Games, Mono

  "The Two Hands of God : The Myths of Polarity" by Alan Watts, (p. 29), 1963.

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• The culture industry perpetually cheats its consumers of what it perpetually promises. The promissory note which, with its plots and staging, it draws on pleasure is endlessly prolonged; the promise, which is actually all the spectacle consists of, is illusory: all it actually confirms is that the real point will never be reached, that the diner must be satisfied with the menu.

  Theodor Adorno

  Real, Promise, Culture

  Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer (1997). “Dialectic of Enlightenment”, p.139, Verso

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• We go to the mountain for enlightenment, for self-realization, for adventure, for discovery. It's pregnant with meaning. When people see a mountain, they invest it with meaning. Not plot. Not character.

  Joe Rohde

  Adventure, Character, Discovery

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• Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.

  Jane Rule

  Choices, Novelists, Fiction

  Jane Rule (1981). “Outlander”, Tallahassee, Fla. : Naiad Press

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• though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Self Reliance, Toil, Corn

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.26, Graphic Arts Books

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• The story is not in the plot but in the telling.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Writing, Stories

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2015). “Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story”, p.123, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.

  Ray Bradbury

  Running, Character, Snow

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• But he doesn't love her. I invented that. It is a plot if you imagine people in love--the lazy looping criss crosses of love, blows, stares, tears. No. It doesn't happen. No love. People meet, touch, stare into one another's faces, shake their heads clear, move on, forget. It doesn't happen.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Moving, Blow, People

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• Some people's lives seem to flow in a narrative; mine had many stops and starts. That's what trauma does. It interrupts the plot. You can't process it because it doesn't fit with what came before or what comes afterward. A friend of mine, a soldier, put it this way. In most of our lives, most of the time, you have a sense of what is to come. There is a steady narrative, a feeling of "lights, camera, action" when big events are imminent. But trauma isn't like that. It just happens, and then life goes on. No one prepares you for it.

  Jessica Stern

  Light, People, Feelings

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• It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so. I admire you, beloved, for the trap you've set. It's like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over.

  Frank O'Hara

  Beautiful, Finals, Beloved

  Frank O'Hara (2005). “In Memory of My Feelings: A Selection of Poems”, p.65, The Museum of Modern Art

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• Maybe it's true that we are all descended from the restless, the nervous, the criminals, the arguers and brawlers, but also the brave and independent and generous. If our ancestors had not been that, they would have stayed in their home plots in the other world and starved over the squeezed-out soil.

  John Steinbeck

  Home, Independent, Other Worlds

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.499, Penguin

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• There is a theory going around that the U.S.A. was and still is a gigantic Masonic plot under the ultimate control of the group known as the Illuminati. It is difficult to look for long at the strange single eye crowning the pyramid which is found on every dollar bill and not begin to believe the story, a little. Too many anarchists in 19th-century Europe—Bakunin, Proudhon, Salverio Friscia—were Masons for it to be pure chance. Lovers of global conspiracy, not all of them Catholic, can count on the Masons for a few good shivers and voids when all else fails.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Believe, Eye, Pyramids

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• I am now convinced that children should not be subjected to the frightfulness of the Christian religion [...]. If the concept of a father who plots to have his own son put to death is presented to children as beautiful and as worthy of society's admiration, what types of human behavior can be presented to them as reprehensible?

  Ruth Hurmence Green

  Beautiful, Christian, Atheist

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• I've got to formulate a plot or end up in jail or shot, success is my only option, failure's not.

  Eminem

  Jail, Ends, Shots

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• Introduce your main characters and themes in the first third of your novel. If you are writing a plot-driven genre novel make sure all your major themes/plot elements are introduced in the first third, which you can call the introduction. Develop your themes and characters in your second third, the development. Resolve your themes, mysteries and so on in the final third, the resolution.

  Michael Moorcock

  Writing, Character, Finals

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• Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme--
  why are they no help to me now
  I want to make
  something imagined, not recalled?

  Robert Lowell

  Blessed, Poetry, Want

  Robert Lowell (1979). “Robert Lowell: a tribute”

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• I have this very moment finished reading a novel called The Vicar of Wakefield [by Oliver Goldsmith].... It appears to me, to be impossible any person could read this book through with a dry eye and yet, I don't much like it.... There is but very little story, the plot is thin, the incidents very rare, the sentiments uncommon, the vicar is contented, humble, pious, virtuous--but upon the whole the book has not at all satisfied my expectations.

  Fanny Burney

  Reading, Book, Eye

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• One of the most striking elements of today's threat picture is that plots to attack America increasingly involve American residents and citizens.

  Janet Napolitano

  America, Citizens, Elements

  "Terror Threat 'Most Heightened' Since 9/11, Napolitano Says" by Jason Ryan and Devin Dwyer, abcnews.go.com. February 9, 2011.

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• The dominant metaphor of conceptual relativism, that of differing points of view, seems to betray an underlying paradox. Differentpoints of view make sense, but only if there is a common co-ordinate system on which to plot them; yet the existence of a common system belies the claim of dramatic incomparability.

  Donald Davidson

  Views, Common, Dramatic

  Donald Davidson (2001). “Inquiries Into Truth and Interpretation: Philosophical Essays”, p.184, Oxford University Press

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• I have never believed that there is a secret United Nations plot to take over the US... But, for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible.

  Gideon Rachman

  Thinking, World Government, Secret

  "And now for a world government" by Gideon Rachman, www.ft.com. December 9, 2008.

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