Plot Quotes - Page 36

• The spirit of Jane Eyre looms over Once Upon a Day.  Lisa Tucker keeps the plot of this gothic novel bubbling with tons of juicy family secrets.

  Stewart O'Nan

  Secret, Juicy, Spirit

  4 Copy quote

• When I'm at the premiere and I see the film in its entirety, I forget plot, I forget the story, I forget what my character goes through, because I really do just let it go.

  Tavis Smiley

  Character, Let It Go, Stories

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is a limited number of plots. There is no limit to the number of stories.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Numbers, Limits, Stories

  4 Copy quote

• The best calculation is the absence of calculation. Once you have attained a certain level of recognition, others generally figure that when you do something, it's for an intelligent reason. So it's really foolish to plot out your movements too carefully in advance. You're better off acting capriciously.

  Pablo Picasso

  Intelligent, Acting, Movement

  7 Copy quote

• If Slater were someone else, Kevin would merely be the poor victim of a horrible plot. Unless he was killed by Slater, in which case he would be the dead victim of a horrible plot

  Ted Dekker

  Would Be, Kevin, Poor

  Ted Dekker (2008). “Dekker 2 in 1 (Obsessed & Three)”, p.287, Thomas Nelson Inc

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• All my life I thought that the story was over when the hero and heroine were safely engaged -- after all, what's good enough for Jane Austen ought to be good enough for anyone. But it's a lie. The story is about to begin, and every day will be a new piece of the plot.

  Mary Ann Shaffer

  Love, Lying, Hero

  Annie Barrows, Mary Ann Shaffer (2011). “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Random House Reader's Circle Deluxe Reading Group Edition): A Novel”, p.274, Dial Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The plot! The plot! What kind of plot could a poet possibly provide that is not surpassed by the thinking, feeling reader? Form alone is divine.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Thinking, Feelings, Kind

  4 Copy quote

• (text message) CMDR ROOT. TRBLE BELOW. HAVN OVRRN BY GOBLINS. PLCE PLAZA SRROUNDED. CUDGEON + OPL KBOI BHND PLOT. NO WPONS OR CMMUNICATIONS. DNA CNONS CNTRLLED BY KBOI. I M TRPPED IN OP BTH. CNCL THNKS IM 2 BLM. IF ALIVE PLSE HLP. IF NOT, WRNG NMBR.

  Eoin Colfer

  Dna, Roots, Alive

  4 Copy quote

• I was supposed to have a script, and had mislaid it. I was supposed to hear cues, and no longer did. I was meant to know the plot, but all I knew was what I saw: flash pictures in variable sequence, images with no 'meaning' beyond their temporary arrangement, not a movie but a cutting-room experience.

  Joan Didion

  Cutting, Variables, Rooms

  Joan Didion (2013). “The White Album”, p.6, Zola Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal, play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to truth, play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind. He who wants to keep his garden tidy does not reserve a plot for weeds

  Dag Hammarskjold

  Weed, Truth, Animal

  30 Copy quote

• Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.

  Baruch Spinoza

  War, Tyrants, Evil

  24 Copy quote

• For time and eternity there have been fathers like Nathan who simply can see no way to have a daughter but to own her like a plot of land. To work her, plow her under, rain down a dreadful poison upon her. Miraculously, it causes these girls to grow. They elongate on the pale slender stalks of their longing, like sunflowers with heavy heads. You can shield them with your body and soul, trying to absorb that awful rain, but they'll still move toward him. Without cease they'll bend to his light.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Girl, Daughter, Father

  Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.162, Faber & Faber

  42 Copy quote

  Show source

• The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had some one pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: "Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  War, Believe, Men

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau (2010). “The Basic Political Writings (Second Edition)”, p.69, Hackett Publishing

  158 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think it's a bit like coming to the end of a book. The plot's in its thickest, all the characters are in a mess, but you can see that there aren't fifty pages left, and you know that the finish can't be far off.

  Herman Wouk

  Book, Character, Thinking

  HERMAN WOUK (1955). “MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• So much for endings. Beginnings are always more fun. True connoisseurs, however, are known to favor the stretch in between, since it's the hardest to do anything with. That's about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.

  Margaret Atwood

  Fun, Favors, Said

  Margaret Atwood (2011). “Good Bones and Simple Murders”, p.56, Nan A. Talese

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• A novel is not a summary of its plot but a collection of instances, of luminous specific details that take us in the direction of the unsaid and unseen.

  Charles Baxter

  Writing, Unseen, Details

  Charles Baxter (2007). “The art of subtext: beyond plot”, Graywolf Pr

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• So the books for the Englishman, as he listened intently or not, had gaps of plot like sections of a road washed out by storms, missing incidents as if locusts had consumed a section of tapestry, as if plaster loosened by the bombing had fallen away from a mural at night.

  Michael Ondaatje

  Book, Night, Missing

  Michael Ondaatje (2011). “The English Patient”, p.7, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Marriage seemed like such a small space whenever I was in it. I liked the getting married. Courtship has a plotline. But there's no plot to being married. Just the same things over and over again. Same fights, same friends, same things you do on a Saturday. The repetition would start to get to me.

  Karen Joy Fowler

  Fighting, Space, Married

  Karen Joy Fowler (2005). “The Jane Austen Book Club”, p.193, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The rule for finding plots for character-centered novels, which is to ask: 'So what's the worst possible thing I can do to *this* guy?' And then do it.

  Lois McMaster Bujold

  Character, Guy, Worst

  Lois McMaster Bujold (1999). “Cordelia's Honor”, p.389, Baen Books

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• A writer always wears glasses and never combs his hair. Half the time he feels angry about everything and the other half depressed. He spends most of his life in bars, arguing with other dishevelled, bespectacled writers. He says very 'deep' things. He always has amazing ideas for the plot of his next novel, and hates the one he has just published.

  Paulo Coelho

  Hate, Glasses, Hair

  4 Copy quote

• Remember, remember, the Fifth of November, the Gunpowder Treason and Plot. I know of no reason why the Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot... But what of the man? I know his name was Guy Fawkes and I know, in 1605, he attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament.

  Alan Moore

  Kings, Dark, Blow

  "Fictional character: Evey Hammond". "V for Vendetta", www.imdb.com. 2005.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Living "in" a story, being part of a narrative, is much more satisfying than living without one. I don't always know what narrative it is, because I'm living my life and not always reflecting on it, but as I edit these pages I am aware that I have an urge to see my sometimes random wandering as having a plot, a purpose guided by some underlying story.

  David Byrne

  Purpose, Stories, Narrative

  David Byrne (2010). “Bicycle Diaries”, p.165, Faber & Faber

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• When we submit our lives to what we read in scripture, we find that we are not being led to see God in our stories but our stories in God's. God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves.

  Eugene H. Peterson

  Stories, Scripture, Submit

  53 Copy quote

• The plot is so tired that even this reviewer, who in infancy was let drop by a nurse with the result that she has ever since been mystified by amateur coin tricks, was able to guess the identity of the murderer from the middle of the book.

  Dorothy Parker

  Book, Tired, Nurse

  Dorothy Parker (1970). “A month of Saturdays: thirty-one famous pieces by "Constant Reader"”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• PLOT is CHARACTER revealed by ACTION.

  Aristotle

  Character, Action

  9 Copy quote