Quotes by John Crowley

About John Crowley:

John Crowley is an American author of fantasy, science fiction and mainstream fiction. He studied at Indiana University and has a second career as a documentary film writer.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Time, I think, is like walking backward away from something: say, from a kiss. First there is the kiss; then you step back, and the eyes fill up your vision, then the eyes are framed in the face as you step further away; the face then is part of a bo...

John Crowley

The better you tell an old story, the more you are talking about right now.

John Crowley

I could be listening to Painted Red weave the stories of the saints in her rich roomy voice, and beginning to see how all those stories were in some way one story: a simple story about being alive, and being a man; a story that, simple as it was, cou...

John Crowley

path is only a name for a place where you find yourself. Where you're going on it is only a story. Where you've been on it is only another. Some of the stories are pleasant ones; some are not. That's dark and light.

John Crowley

...only think a moment that we are here now, and that that was then, and it has come to this, and how odd, odd, odd it is!

John Crowley

Novelty and Security: the security of novelty, the novelty of security. Always the full thing, the whole subject, the true subject, stood just behind the one you found yourself contemplating. The trick, but it wasn't a trick, was to take up at once t...

John Crowley

Almost as soon as it was lit it began to sound as though it were running down, but in fact it would continue to run down for a long time. He knew the feeling.

John Crowley

God, he thought, her eyes are so bright, flashing, deep, full of promise, all those things eyes are in books but never are in life, and she was his.

John Crowley

Learning to decipher words had only added to the pleasures of holding spines and turning pages, measuring the journey to the end with a thumb-riffle, poring over frontispieces. Books! Opening with a crackle of old glue, releasing perfume; closing wit...

John Crowley

She had always lived her best life in dreams. She knew no greater pleasure than that moment of passage into the other place, when her limbs grew warm and heavy and the sparkling darkness behind her lids became ordered and doors opened; when conscious...

John Crowley

Violet said nothing, though big pearly tears, like a child's, trembled at her lashes. She suddenly missed John very much. Into him she could pour all the inarticulate perceptions, all the knowings and unknowings she felt, which, though he couldn't un...

John Crowley

There was after all no mystery in the end of love, no mystery but the mystery of love itself, which was large certainly but as real as grass, as natural and unaccountable as bloom and branch and their growth.

John Crowley

They called him John Storm: John after his grandfather, but Storm after his father and his mother.

John Crowley

Stories last longer: but only by becoming only stories.

John Crowley

The bottom line is, it's a great script and that's very inspiring and makes you want to overcome whatever technical difficulties you come up against.

John Crowley

Fundamentally, whether directing in the theatre or a film, you have to be a good storyteller, regardless of the form. The thing I had to work hardest at was thinking in shots.

John Crowley

Certainly it's very difficult to keep momentum going through a film which has as many characters as this does, and the piece took on a life of its own to try and shape it. That took all the time we had in editing.

John Crowley

Realistic novels simply pretend that the rules of their invented worlds are identical to the rules of actual life, but that's a ruse.

John Crowley

I had very clever producers, who scheduled it brilliantly, but scheduling it was a nightmare.

John Crowley

I write in expectation that readers want to participate in a kind of two-sided game: They are trying to guess what I am up to - what the story's up to - and I'm giving them clues and matter to keep them interested without giving everything away at th...

John Crowley

Author Bio

  • NameJohn Crowley
  • DescriptionAmerican writer
  • Born1942
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Screenwriter; Novelist
  • WorksEngine Summer; Little; The Solitudes; Love & Sleep