Tag Archives: memory

Anita Loos (b. April 26): “I love high style in low company.”

26 Apr

loos

Anita Loos (born 26 April 1889, died 18 August 1981) was an American screenwriter, playwright and author, best known for her blockbuster comic novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Nine Quotes:

  1. Fate keeps on happening.
  2. Memory is more indelible than ink.
  3. I’ve always loved high style in low company.
  4. It isn’t that gentlemen really prefer blondes, it’s just that we look dumber.
  5. A kiss on the hand may feel very, very good, but a diamond and sapphire bracelet lasts forever.
  6. On a plane you can pick up more and better people than on any other public conveyance since the stagecoach.
  7. The rarest of all things in American life is charm. We spend billions every year manufacturing fake charm that goes under the heading of public relations. Without it, America would be grim indeed.
  8. There is a serious defect in the thinking of someone who wants – more than anything else – to become rich. As long as they don’t have the money, it’ll seem like a worthwhile goal. Once they do, they’ll understand how important other things are – and have always been.
  9. I can never take for granted the euphoria produced by a cup of coffee. I’m grateful every day that it isn’t banned as a drug, that I don’t have to buy it from a pusher, that its cost is minimal and there’s no need to increase the intake. I can count on its stimulation 365 mornings every year. And thanks to the magic in a cup of coffee, I’m able to plunge into a whole day’s cheerful thinking.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Vladimir Nabokov (b. April 22): “I think like a genius, speak like a child.”

22 Apr

Vladimir Nabokov, born 22 April 1899 and died 2 July 1977, was a Russian-American novelist who was praised for his use of complex and original plots, and clever alliteration and wordplay. Nabokov’s Lolita is his most famous novel. He was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction seven times, but never won it. He also made serious contributions as a lepidopterist and chess composer.

Quotes on writing:

  1. I don’t think in any language. I think in images.
  2. The more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.
  3. Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.
  4. Style and structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.
  5. I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, I speak like a child.
  6. A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.
  7. Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.
  8. Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations.
  9. Lolita is famous, not me. I am an obscure, doubly obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable name.
  10. The writer’s job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.
  11. Turning one’s novel into a movie script is rather like making a series of sketches for a painting that has long ago been finished and framed.
  12. The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.
  13. My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. My pleasures are the most intense known to man: writing and butterfly hunting.
  14. There is nothing in the world that I loathe more than group activity, that communal bath where the hairy and slippery mix in a multiplication of mediocrity.

 

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Cara Black (b. November 14): “I’m an eavesdropper” & other quotes on writing

14 Nov
black

pinterest.com/pin/39406565465150740/

Cara Black, born 14 November 1951, is a best-selling American mystery writer best known for her Aimée Léduc novels featuring a female Paris-based private investigator.

Quotes on writing:

  1. Write what you are passionate about – that’s the best advice I ever received.
  2. I wanted to tell a story. Crime fiction is a great framework, a structure to hang a story.
  3. Research is the BEST part of my job. It means I must go to Paris, as I tell my husband.
  4. I’m an eavesdropper, bad habit, but invaluable in my line of work. I think writers do that all the time. 
  5. The past informs the present. Memory makes the map we carry, no matter how hard we try to erase it.
  6. To me a gripping story is about the characters, how crime impacts them; the victim’s world and forensics and technology are tools. 
  7. Maybe mysteries help us deal with the frustration and unresolved situations we encounter in daily life. When I read a mystery I like to experience some sense that justice is served. Not that all the loose ends are tied up but that good in some form triumphs.
  8. A line of dialogue or a mannerism can put a character onto the page. The challenge is to keep the character speaking more dialogue, being memorable and intrinsic to the plot and storyline. Especially in crime fiction and mysteries, everything happens for a reason, every detail could be a clue, a red herring, a false lead or a key to a sub plot and a suspect.
  9. I like to think that Paris is a character in my books. Sense of place, that unique part of Paris that speaks to me drives the story. Paris is really a collection of villages, twenty arrondissements or districts that each have a flavour. I try to think why crime would occur here in this quartier of Paris, what crime would happen here, who lives here, what is the distinct taste of this quartier of Paris and then the story comes
  10. My writing group meets twice a month and we critique each other’s work in progress. I’m an equal member and receive comments like everyone else. I’m always looking to make my story better. It’s important to listen to the comments, take what makes sense or would make the story clearer, deepen or enhance it. Or even delve more into the character, strengthen what would be more organic to the plot. If several people make the same comments, I listen.

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Anita Loos (b. April 26): “I love high style in low company.”

26 Apr

loos

Anita Loos (born 26 April 1889, died 18 August 1981) was an American screenwriter, playwright and author, best known for her blockbuster comic novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Nine Quotes:

  1. Fate keeps on happening.
  2. Memory is more indelible than ink.
  3. I’ve always loved high style in low company.
  4. It isn’t that gentlemen really prefer blondes, it’s just that we look dumber.
  5. A kiss on the hand may feel very, very good, but a diamond and sapphire bracelet lasts forever.
  6. On a plane you can pick up more and better people than on any other public conveyance since the stagecoach.
  7. The rarest of all things in American life is charm. We spend billions every year manufacturing fake charm that goes under the heading of public relations. Without it, America would be grim indeed.
  8. There is a serious defect in the thinking of someone who wants – more than anything else – to become rich. As long as they don’t have the money, it’ll seem like a worthwhile goal. Once they do, they’ll understand how important other things are – and have always been.
  9. I can never take for granted the euphoria produced by a cup of coffee. I’m grateful every day that it isn’t banned as a drug, that I don’t have to buy it from a pusher, that its cost is minimal and there’s no need to increase the intake. I can count on its stimulation 365 mornings every year. And thanks to the magic in a cup of coffee, I’m able to plunge into a whole day’s cheerful thinking.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Vladimir Nabokov (b. April 22): “I think like a genius, speak like a child.”

22 Apr

Vladimir Nabokov, born 22 April 1899 and died 2 July 1977, was a Russian-American novelist who was praised for his use of complex and original plots, and clever alliteration and wordplay. Nabokov’s Lolita is his most famous novel. He was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction seven times, but never won it. He also made serious contributions as a lepidopterist and chess composer.

Quotes on writing:

  1. I don’t think in any language. I think in images.
  2. The more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.
  3. Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.
  4. Style and structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.
  5. I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, I speak like a child.
  6. A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.
  7. Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.
  8. Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations.
  9. Lolita is famous, not me. I am an obscure, doubly obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable name.
  10. The writer’s job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.
  11. Turning one’s novel into a movie script is rather like making a series of sketches for a painting that has long ago been finished and framed.
  12. The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.
  13. My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. My pleasures are the most intense known to man: writing and butterfly hunting.
  14. There is nothing in the world that I loathe more than group activity, that communal bath where the hairy and slippery mix in a multiplication of mediocrity.

 

Tags: , , , , ,

Cara Black (b. November 14): “I’m an eavesdropper” & other quotes on writing

14 Nov
black

pinterest.com/pin/39406565465150740/

Cara Black, born 14 November 1951, is a best-selling American mystery writer best known for her Aimée Léduc novels featuring a female Paris-based private investigator.

Quotes on writing:

  1. Write what you are passionate about – that’s the best advice I ever received.
  2. I wanted to tell a story. Crime fiction is a great framework, a structure to hang a story.
  3. Research is the BEST part of my job. It means I must go to Paris, as I tell my husband.
  4. I’m an eavesdropper, bad habit, but invaluable in my line of work. I think writers do that all the time. 
  5. The past informs the present. Memory makes the map we carry, no matter how hard we try to erase it.
  6. To me a gripping story is about the characters, how crime impacts them; the victim’s world and forensics and technology are tools. 
  7. Maybe mysteries help us deal with the frustration and unresolved situations we encounter in daily life. When I read a mystery I like to experience some sense that justice is served. Not that all the loose ends are tied up but that good in some form triumphs.
  8. A line of dialogue or a mannerism can put a character onto the page. The challenge is to keep the character speaking more dialogue, being memorable and intrinsic to the plot and storyline. Especially in crime fiction and mysteries, everything happens for a reason, every detail could be a clue, a red herring, a false lead or a key to a sub plot and a suspect.
  9. I like to think that Paris is a character in my books. Sense of place, that unique part of Paris that speaks to me drives the story. Paris is really a collection of villages, twenty arrondissements or districts that each have a flavour. I try to think why crime would occur here in this quartier of Paris, what crime would happen here, who lives here, what is the distinct taste of this quartier of Paris and then the story comes
  10. My writing group meets twice a month and we critique each other’s work in progress. I’m an equal member and receive comments like everyone else. I’m always looking to make my story better. It’s important to listen to the comments, take what makes sense or would make the story clearer, deepen or enhance it. Or even delve more into the character, strengthen what would be more organic to the plot. If several people make the same comments, I listen.

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Kazuo Ishiguro (b. November 8): “Memory is central for me” & other quotes on writing

8 Nov
(c) Peter Edwards; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

pinterest.com/pin/39406565465113267/

Kazuo Ishiguro, born 8 November 1954, is a Japanese-born British novelist. He’s one of the most celebrated contemporary fiction authors in the English-speaking world. He’s been nominated for the Man Booker Prize four times, and won in 1989 for The Remains of the Day.

Quotes on writing

  1. Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory.
  2. As a writer, I’m more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened. 
  3. I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I’ve always seen my stories as enlarged songs.
  4. I don’t think it’s any fun, even if you are one of the most respected authors in the world like Margaret Atwood, to keep being nominated and not win.
  5. I really have to think of the things fiction can do that film can’t and play to the strengths of the novel. With a novel you can get right inside somebody’s head.
  6. I think I had actually served my apprenticeship as a writer of fiction by writing all those songs. I had already been through phases of autobiographical or experimental stuff. 
  7. Screenplays I didn’t really care about, journalism, travel books, getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write.
  8. What is difficult is the promotion, balancing the public side of a writer’s life with the writing. I think that’s something a lot of writers are having to face. Writers have become much more public now. 
  9. I want my words to survive translation. I know when I write a book now I will have to go and spend three days being intensely interrogated by journalists in Denmark or wherever. That fact, I believe, informs the way I write-with those Danish journalists leaning over my shoulder.

 

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Anita Loos (b. April 26): “I love high style in low company.”

26 Apr

loos

Anita Loos (born 26 April 1889, died 18 August 1981) was an American screenwriter, playwright and author, best known for her blockbuster comic novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Nine Quotes:

  1. Fate keeps on happening.
  2. Memory is more indelible than ink.
  3. I’ve always loved high style in low company.
  4. It isn’t that gentlemen really prefer blondes, it’s just that we look dumber.
  5. A kiss on the hand may feel very, very good, but a diamond and sapphire bracelet lasts forever.
  6. On a plane you can pick up more and better people than on any other public conveyance since the stagecoach.
  7. The rarest of all things in American life is charm. We spend billions every year manufacturing fake charm that goes under the heading of public relations. Without it, America would be grim indeed.
  8. There is a serious defect in the thinking of someone who wants – more than anything else – to become rich. As long as they don’t have the money, it’ll seem like a worthwhile goal. Once they do, they’ll understand how important other things are – and have always been.
  9. I can never take for granted the euphoria produced by a cup of coffee. I’m grateful every day that it isn’t banned as a drug, that I don’t have to buy it from a pusher, that its cost is minimal and there’s no need to increase the intake. I can count on its stimulation 365 mornings every year. And thanks to the magic in a cup of coffee, I’m able to plunge into a whole day’s cheerful thinking.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Vladimir Nabokov (b. April 22): “I think like a genius, speak like a child.”

22 Apr

Vladimir Nabokov, born 22 April 1899 and died 2 July 1977, was a Russian-American novelist who was praised for his use of complex and original plots, and clever alliteration and wordplay. Nabokov’s Lolita is his most famous novel. He was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction seven times, but never won it. He also made serious contributions as a lepidopterist and chess composer.

Quotes on writing:

  1. I don’t think in any language. I think in images.
  2. The more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.
  3. Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.
  4. Style and structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.
  5. I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, I speak like a child.
  6. A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.
  7. Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.
  8. Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations.
  9. Lolita is famous, not me. I am an obscure, doubly obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable name.
  10. The writer’s job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.
  11. Turning one’s novel into a movie script is rather like making a series of sketches for a painting that has long ago been finished and framed.
  12. The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.
  13. My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. My pleasures are the most intense known to man: writing and butterfly hunting.
  14. There is nothing in the world that I loathe more than group activity, that communal bath where the hairy and slippery mix in a multiplication of mediocrity.

 

Tags: , , , , ,

Cara Black (b. November 14): “I’m an eavesdropper” & other quotes on writing

14 Nov
black

pinterest.com/pin/39406565465150740/

Cara Black, born 14 November 1951, is a best-selling American mystery writer best known for her Aimée Léduc novels featuring a female Paris-based private investigator.

Quotes on writing:

  1. Write what you are passionate about – that’s the best advice I ever received.
  2. I wanted to tell a story. Crime fiction is a great framework, a structure to hang a story.
  3. Research is the BEST part of my job. It means I must go to Paris, as I tell my husband.
  4. I’m an eavesdropper, bad habit, but invaluable in my line of work. I think writers do that all the time. 
  5. The past informs the present. Memory makes the map we carry, no matter how hard we try to erase it.
  6. To me a gripping story is about the characters, how crime impacts them; the victim’s world and forensics and technology are tools. 
  7. Maybe mysteries help us deal with the frustration and unresolved situations we encounter in daily life. When I read a mystery I like to experience some sense that justice is served. Not that all the loose ends are tied up but that good in some form triumphs.
  8. A line of dialogue or a mannerism can put a character onto the page. The challenge is to keep the character speaking more dialogue, being memorable and intrinsic to the plot and storyline. Especially in crime fiction and mysteries, everything happens for a reason, every detail could be a clue, a red herring, a false lead or a key to a sub plot and a suspect.
  9. I like to think that Paris is a character in my books. Sense of place, that unique part of Paris that speaks to me drives the story. Paris is really a collection of villages, twenty arrondissements or districts that each have a flavour. I try to think why crime would occur here in this quartier of Paris, what crime would happen here, who lives here, what is the distinct taste of this quartier of Paris and then the story comes
  10. My writing group meets twice a month and we critique each other’s work in progress. I’m an equal member and receive comments like everyone else. I’m always looking to make my story better. It’s important to listen to the comments, take what makes sense or would make the story clearer, deepen or enhance it. Or even delve more into the character, strengthen what would be more organic to the plot. If several people make the same comments, I listen.

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

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