"One of the reasons men go to war is because, frankly, they like it. I'm not going to write a book in which any time there's an act of violence it's written in such a way that you really don't enjoy it. What's much more productive is to give the audience their act of violence. You give them the excitement of the fight or whatever it may be, and with that also comes a kind of sickness. Because you've got to face the facts that it might be astoundingly cool to stand off three guys with a sword, but at the same time there's going to be blood and broken bones, and a mess. You have to take all of that on board. You have to try to do justice to all aspects of it." - Richard K. Morgan
Very nice. Well, perhaps not nice but meaningful and rings true to me. It can be easy to gloss the true impact of violence at times. And easy to forget it.
We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” ― Ernest Hemingway, The Wild Year I loved this one.
The quote in my signature comes to mind: “A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.” - Richard Bach Some other notable ones (apologies if I repost a quote, I haven't had a chance to go through the entire thread) “If writers wrote as carelessly as some people talk, then adhasdh asdglaseuyt[bn[ pasdlgkhasdfasdf.” - Lemony Snicket “And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” - Sylvia Plath “The scariest moment is always just before you start.” - Stephen King “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” - Thomas Mann “I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of.” - Joss Whedon
“The yearning for an afterlife is the opposite of selfish: it is love and praise for the world that we are privileged, in this complex interval of light, to witness and experience.”- John Updike
"Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke." - F. Scott Fitzgerald
so was this supposed to be great quote from a writer, or a quote in general from a great writer? I'll let you guys flip the coin.... “Horror isn’t about scaring people, it’s about forcing people to confront what scares them.” ETA: it occurred to me I didn’t credit the quote; I could be wrong, but I think it was Stephen King.
I came across this from Gene Fowler this morning: "Sometime when I look at a thing I've written I get the feeling that I must have gone out of the room and left the typewriter running." I think we've all had this feeling.
"All publishers are Columbuses. The successful author is their America. The reflection that they -- like Columbus -- didn't discover what they intended to discover, and didn't discover what they started out to discover, doesn't trouble them. All they remember is that they discovered America; they forget that they set out to discover some patch or corner of India." --Mark Twain (who, it should be recalled was himself a publisher as well as an author, and knew whereof he spoke)
Actually the funny thing about Columbus was that we wasn't trying to discover anything. He was just trying to prove you could sail west to get to Asia and outflank the Ottoman Empire, which is why the Spanish funded him. And later on he decided that it actually had been India after all and he was Totally Right the Whole Time. So he was actually kind of a miserable failure. Amerigo Vespucci was rightly credited by many at the time as the real discover because he had been the one to tell Columbus that it was a new region and to begin mapping it, hence it's naming as "the Americas" after him. Columbus was also a pretty brutal racist slaver even for slavers soooo.
Just a fun fact, also a quote from from an unknown author. "How many of you guys know Romeo and Juliet was actually a parody? A Satire of other plays like it, to be exact? HAH. Think that one over."
“The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it.” ― Ernest Hemingway
It was something along the lines of "I don't create characters, I tear myself into pieces and give those pieces names." I can't find who said this quote for the life of me. I don't think it fits everyone, but it sure fits most of my characters. I tend to take a bit of my personality and have that blossom into a new character.
"Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders...when nobody's around kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you go to bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up the next morning there's twice as much of it... There's the First Law of Kipple...Kipple drives out nonkipple." Phillip K. Dick
"He learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It's shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult." Frank Herbert
Rocky Balboa: "Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place, and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done! Now if you know what you're worth, then go out and get what you're worth, but you gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain't you. You're better than that! I'm always gonna love you, no matter what. No matter what happens. You're my son and you're my blood. You're the best thing in my life. But until you start believing in yourself, you ain't gonna have a life. Don't forget to visit your mother. " The first part is really inspiring. the second part shows that your mom is the real hero in your life. Thanks mom. and thanks Rambo.
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our own frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." H. P. Lovecraft
Since there appear to be a few Lovecraft fans here. "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn." H. P. Lovecraft
