A Quote by Mark Twain
To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself...Anybody can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.
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Anybody can have ideas-the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.
To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement.
A single and distinct luminous body causes stronger relief in the objects than a diffused light; as may be seen by comparing one side of a landscape illuminated by the sun, and one overshadowed by clouds, and illuminated only by the diffused light of the atmosphere.
I feel that in the past, my style has shown itself to be capable of handling dark and light in the same paragraph, or even in the same sentence. That's something I almost take for granted. I think it was more a concern to get the details right and persuasively recreate the world I was trying to write about.
I found I'm quite happy working on a sentence for an hour or more, searching for the right phrase, the right word. I compare it to the work of a stonecutter - chipping away at the raw material until it's just right, or as right as you can get it.
All great films are a resolution of a conflict between darkness and light. There is no single right way to express yourself. There are infinite possibilities for the use of light with shadows and colors. The decisions you make about composition, movement and the countless combinations of these and other variables is what makes it an art.
Before the scene, before the paragraph, even before the sentence, comes the word. Individual words and phrases are the building blocks of fiction, the genes that generate everything else. Use the right words, and your fiction can blossom. The French have a phrase for it - le mot juste - the exact right word in the exact right position.
We cannot control the way people interpret our ideas or thoughts, but we can control the words and tones we choose to convey them. Peace is built on understanding, and wars are built on misunderstandings. Never underestimate the power of a single word, and never recklessly throw around words. One wrong word, or misinterpreted word, can change the meaning of an entire sentence - and even start a war. And one right word, or one kind word, can grant you the heavens and open doors.
When I'm writing, it's about the page. It's not about the movie. It's not about cinema. It's about the literature of me putting my pen to paper and writing a good page and making it work completely as a document unto itself. That's my first artistic contribution. If I do my job right, by the end of the script, I should be having the thought, 'You know, if I were to just publish this now and not make it . . . I'm done.
Ideas matter a lot, the underlying ideas that stand behind policies. When you don't have ideas, your policies are flip-flopping all over the place. When you do have ideas, you have more consistency. And when you have the right ideas - then you can get somewhere (reagan had the right ideas).
I finish the book so I can see how it's going to end. I write that first sentence, and if it's the right first sentence, it leads to the right second sentence and three years later you have a 500-page manuscript, but it really is like going on a trip, going on a journey. It's a voyage.
I huff and puff and struggle with every sentence, paragraph and page - sometimes every word as well.
It's kind of like sentencing. A lot of people say that we have a heavy sentence for this crime and a light sentence for another crime, and what we ought to do is reduce the heavy sentence so it's more in line with the other. Wrong. In most cases we ought to increase the light sentence and make it compatible with the heavy sentence, and be serious about punishment because we are becoming too tolerant as a society, folks, especially of crime, in too many parts of the country.
It's not that you get a cliché and then wiggle it about or use synonyms. You don't take an ordinary decorative paragraph and give it style. What you're trying to do is be faithful to your perceptions and transmit them as faithfully as you can. I say these sentences until they sound right. There's no objective reason why they're right. They just sound right to me.
You have a right to protest. But I don't quite understand why anybody thinks it's a good idea to deny somebody else the right to express his or her point of view.
The most fatal blow to progress is slavery of the intellect. The most sacred right of humanity is the right to think, and next to the right to think is the right to express that thought without fear.
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