The term - 'Fairy-Tales' is so ironical in itself, when I sometimes sit to write love stories with a happy ending, it usually drags me into a dilemma whether, I should even begin with a love story at first place or not? Because honestly, I haven't se...
Show me you care about our common tongue. Bring to your [writing] passion, deeply informed by knowledge of your subject. Stay me, not with apples and flagons, but with wit and grace, humor and intense caring about your discipline. Don't slack, don't ...
Commenting acidly on a writer whom I perhaps too naively admired, my old classics teacher put on his best sneer to ask: 'Wouldn't you say, Hitchens, that his writing was somewhat ?' This lofty schoolmaster employed my name sarcastically, and stressed...
{ } I do so wish, that, in all these big questions, literary men would take more for a guide than they do, or seem to do. You have, of course, an immense constituency; but your love of letters and your deeply poetic spirit render you worthy of a far ...
Heavy is the head that holds the pen of creation. We construct these characters from nothing, molding them from our imaginations. We give them hopes and dreams and unique personalities until they feel so real you’re mind believes it must be so. We ...
Gordie: Fuck writing, I don't want to be a writer. It's stupid. It's a stupid waste of time. Chris: That's your dad talking. Gordie: Bullshit. Chris: Bull true. Chris: I know how your dad feels about you. He doesn't give a shit about you. Denny was t...
Erin Gruwell: The evaluation assignment was to grade yourself on the work you're doing. You gave yourself an F. What's that about? Andre: It's what I feel I deserve, that's all. Erin Gruwell: Oh really? [pause] Erin Gruwell: You know what this is? Th...
Eva: White people wanting respect like they deserve it for free. Erin Gruwell: I'm a teacher, it doesn't matter what color I am. Eva: It's all about color, it's about people deciding what you deserve, about people wanting what they don't deserve. Abo...
Margaret Campbell: You're an honor student. If you transfer to Mrs. Gruwell's class, think how that'll reflect on your records. Victoria: It doesn't matter to me, my grades will still be the same. Look, Ms. Campbell, when I first transferred to this ...
Writers don't make any money at all. We make about a dollar. It is terrible. But then again we don't work either. We sit around in our underwear until noon then go downstairs and make coffee, fry some eggs, read the paper, read part of a book, smell ...
It always has been and always will be the same. The old folk of our grandfathers' young days sang a song bearing exactly the same burden; and the young folk of to-day will drone out precisely similar nonsense for the aggravation of the next generatio...
A synthesis—an abstraction, chunk, or gist idea—is a neural pattern. Good chunks form neural patterns that resonate, not only within the subject we’re working in, but with other subjects and areas of our lives. The abstraction helps you transfe...
I think Dr. Willis McNelly at the California State University at Fullerton put it best when he said that the true protagonist of an sf story or novel is an idea and not a person. If it is *good* sf the idea is new, it is stimulating, and, probably mo...
Forgiveness. The ability to forgive oneself. Stop here for a few breaths and think about this because it is the key to making art, and very possibly the key to finding any semblance of happiness in life. Every time I have set out to translate the boo...
Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action. Do it or don't do it. It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or wri...
When I first read Lovecraft around 1971, and even more so when I began to read about his life, I immediately knew that I wanted to write horror stories. I had read Arthur Machen before I read Lovecraft, and I didn’t have that reaction at all. It wa...
Marcus: Lady, stop acting like you tryin' to understand our situation, and just do your little babysitting up there. Erin Gruwell: That's what you think this is? Marcus: It ain't nothing else. When I look out in the world I don't see nobody that look...
Annie Wilkes: Here's your pills. Paul Sheldon: Annie? Annie, what is it? Annie Wilkes: The rain. Sometimes it gives me the blues. When you first came here, I only loved the writer part of Paul Sheldon. Now I know I love the rest of him, too. I know y...
Love was the greatest thing, wasn't it? Love was what we had that no one else had or could ever have? And you were a genius and I was your whole life. I was your partner and your little black flower. Slop. Love is just another dirty lie. Love is ergo...
