Stories Quotes - Page 23

• I see myself as a novelist, period. I mean, the material I work with is what is classified as science fiction and fantasy, and I really don't think about these things when I'm writing. I'm just thinking about telling a story and developing my characters.

  Roger Zelazny

  Writing, Character, Mean

  "A Conversation With Roger Zelazny". Talking with Terry Dowling and Keith Curtis in Science Fiction Vol. 1, #2, June 1978.

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• I think the biggest mistake you can make in creator owned work is having info-dumps like, "Here's how this world works!" it's just like someone playing dungeon master and boring me with the backstory of their fucking world. Just bring me into you story and get it cooking.

  Rick Remender

  Mistake, Thinking, Cooking

  "[Interview] Rick Remender Talks Parallel Universes In ‘Black Science’". Interview with Lonnie Nadler, bloody-disgusting.com. November 26, 2013.

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• Today's biggest headlines are stories about people who thought they were doing something that was secret: Jesse Jackson's secret girlfriend and child, Monica Lewinski's private meetings with the president and confidential girl talk with Linda Tripp. Just think of the news stories we've watched on television.

  Ted Haggard

  Girl, Children, Thinking

  Ted Haggard (2003). “Letters from Home”, Regal Books

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• When you're telling a story, you've got to give details.

  Gao Xingjian

  Giving, Details

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• You know, not every good book needs to be a movie, or a television series, or a video game. There's great work in those mediums, of course, but sometimes a book should remain a book. I still believe nothing tells a story with the richness and complexity of a good novel. When people say they think a book would make a good movie, they say this sometimes because, if it worked, they already saw all the images in the movie theatre that is in their brains. And sometimes that is the way it should stay.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Book, Believe, Thinking

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• In Los Angeles you get the sense sometimes that there's a mysterious patrol at night: when the streets are empty and everyone's asleep, they go erasing the past. It's like a bad Ray Bradbury story.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Past, Night, Rays

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• Once I'd worked out that I couldn't possibly expect people to enjoy a monstrous, 3000-page book, I realised I could in fact create a labyrinth of a story with four different points of entry. But what interested me was creating something that would rearrange itself every time you read one of the other books. So depending on which order you read them, the implications and angles would change. To get that right, each one of the books had to have its own personality and texture -- even though they are connected, they are very different creatures.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Book, Order, Creating

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• As readers, we want not only a strong story, but also characters we can relate to, characters that feel real. We have to find something of ourselves in them. Each character, even those only there to serve the mechanics of the plot, should have a number of layers. The entire world you are stepping into as a reader must feel real. It must have resonance, you must be able to touch the light; smell the smells.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Strong, Real, Character

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• The thing is that my first novel, which was basically a mystery adventure story, won quite an important award in Spain for young adult fiction, and because of this it became a very successful book, and right now it's some sort of a standard title, it's read widely in many high schools in Spain, so I think, in a way, I was a victim of my own success in the field of young adult fiction, because it was never my own natural register. I never intended to write that kind of fiction, but I became very successful at it.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Book, Writing, School

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• About First Landing by Robert Zubrin: Someday I'd like to read a story about competent people on Mars.

  James Nicoll

  People, Mars, Firsts

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• I understand some of the people's impatience with the show last year. I think that Lisa's (Lili Taylor) story line (marrying Nate with minimal motivation in season three) became a little bit of a diversion - and that happens. It happens in every show.

  Chris Albrecht

  Motivation, Thinking, Years

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• Everyone is here on earth as an artist; to tell his particular story or sing her irreplaceable song; to leave a unique creative signature.

  Leonard Wolf

  Song, Artist, Unique

  Naomi Wolf, Leonard Wolf (2006). “The Treehouse: Eccentric Wisdom from My Father on How to Live, Love, and See”, Simon and Schuster

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• Whenever the circus would come to town, I would tell Ethan all kinds of kinky clown domination stories involving the leather clown, like the time she forced me to have sex with her in the little car, or the time she kept spraying me with the seltzer bottle until I obeyed her every command. Ethan and I would laugh and laugh at these tall tales, but I could tell deep down, he was wondering whether the leather clown was really real or not. And I would let him wonder.

  John S. Hall

  Sex, Real, Laughing

  "Song: 'Leather Clown' ('They')". 1988.

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• I can't tell a story in the white man's language, so I say what I want to say with my paintings.

  Allen Sapp

  Men, White Man, Want

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• When the press writes scare stories about the global labor supply draining jobs from rich to poor places, the story is usually presented as a "race to the bottom" simply in terms of wages. Capitalism supposedly looks for labor wherever labor is cheapest. This story is half wrong. A kind of cultural selection is also at work, so that jobs leave high-wage countries like the United States and Germany, but migrate to low-wage economies with skilled, sometimes overqualified workers.

  Richard Sennett

  Country, Jobs, Writing

  Richard Sennett (2007). “The Culture of the New Capitalism”, p.87, Yale University Press

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• I believe stories are very important to all performances. The life story of the performer shapes their work, and the life stories of the audience alter how they receive the work, what they read into the performer.

  Marina Abramovic

  Believe, Important, Shapes

  "An Interview with Marina Abramović: Art, Science and the Marina Abramović Institute". Interview with Stephanie Spiro, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 23, 2013.

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• I don't worry much about whether or not one of my stories contains elements of the supernatural. If I come up with what I think is a nifty concept, I'll give it a whirl.

  Richard Laymon

  Thinking, Giving, Worry

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• The truth is, everything we know about America, everything Americans come to know about being American, isn't from the news. I live there. We don't go home at the end of the day and think, "Well, I really know who I am now because the Wall Street Journal says that the Stock Exchange closed at this many points." What we know about how to be who we are comes from stories. It comes from the novels, the movies, the fashion magazines. It comes from popular culture.

  Chris Abani

  Fashion, Wall, Home

  "On humanity". TED Talks, www.ted.com. February, 2008.

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• We all recall the cruel stepmother in fairy tales. That archetype is often a necessary element in a fairy tale so that the heroine/hero can become a person of character and power. Stories of heroes and heroines often begin with a wound or loss or injustice and end with heroic acts of restoration.

  David Richo

  Hero, Character, Loss

  David Richo (2007). “The Power of Coincidence: How Life Shows Us What We Need to Know”, p.17, Shambhala Publications

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• I'm more interested in plot than theme, but I hope my values find their way into my stories: kindness, sympathy, effort, and humor!

  Gail Carson Levine

  Kindness, Effort, Plot

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• When I was little I knew my father had been an orphan and had lived in an orphanage. I was curious, but my father wouldn't satisfy my curiosity. He told only one story about the orphanage, and that was of sneaking out and buying candy, which he sold to other orphans. He said he had a pretty good business going - till he was busted! I guess he told that anecdote because he was the hero of it and I suspect he was rarely the hero as a child, more often the victim. There's a photo of the actual orphanage on my website, and you can see it's a forbidding looking place.

  Gail Carson Levine

  Children, Father, Hero

  Interview with Jessica Day George, www.bookshoptalk.com. September 22, 2011.

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• Writing is a weird thing because we can read, we know how to write a sentence. It's not like a trumpet where you have to get some skill before you can even produce a sound. It's misleading because it's hard to make stories. It seems like it should be easy to do but it's not. The more you write, the better you're going to get. Write and write and write. Try not to be hard on yourself.

  Gail Carson Levine

  Writing, Skills, Trying

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• No music. No rituals. At home I write in my office or on the laptop in the kitchen where our puppy likes to sleep, and I love his company. But I've trained myself to be able to work anywhere, and I write on trains, planes, in automobiles (if I'm not the driver), airports, hotel rooms. I travel often. If I couldn't write wherever I was I would get little done. I also can write in short bursts. Fifteen minutes are enough to move a story forward.

  Gail Carson Levine

  Moving, Home, Writing

  Interview with Jessica Day George, www.bookshoptalk.com. September 22, 2011.

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• I think kids abandon stories all the time. They start stories and get frustrated or get a different, better idea. I think that it is more worthwhile to stick with a story and revise it and try to finish it than abandon ship. Revisions, for any writer, are the name of the game.

  Gail Carson Levine

  Kids, Thinking, Games

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• I wrote as a kid, but I never wanted to be a writer particularly. I had been drawing and painting for years and loved that. And I meditate, and one time when I was meditating, I started thinking, "Gee Gail, you love stories -- you read all the time. How come you never tell yourself a story?" While I should have been saying my mantra to myself, I started telling myself a story. It turned out to be an art appreciation book for kids with reproductions of famous artworks and pencil drawings that I did. I tried to get it published and was rejected wholesale.

  Gail Carson Levine

  Appreciation, Art, Book

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