A Quote by Stephen McCauley

Jill Eisenstadt's comic second novel, 'Kiss Out,' is a work of such extravagant wackiness, eccentricity, and exuberance that any attempt to squeeze it into the confines of a simple plot summary seems doomed to failure and is possibly pointless.

Stephen McCauley

Quote Author

Stephen McCauley
American - Author
Born: June 26, 1955

I feel as if things are falling apart within me, like so many glass partitions shattering. I walk from place to place in the grip of a fury, needing to act, yet can do nothing about it because any attempt seems doomed in advance. Failure, everywhere failure. Only suicide hovers above me, gleaming and inaccessible.

Michel Houellebecq

Any attempt to list the ten best science fiction novels is doomed to failure.

Ann Leckie

Any attempt to define literary theory in terms of a distinctive method is doomed to failure.

Terry Eagleton

A novel is not a summary of its plot but a collection of instances, of luminous specific details that take us in the direction of the unsaid and unseen.

Charles Baxter

Jill Eisenstadt is a writer of many admirable gifts. Foremost among them are a sharp eye for people, a playful love of language, and, it's probably safe to assume, nearly boundless energy.

Stephen McCauley

You can't possibly predict what will last or not. But once you attempt to write for the ages, you're doomed.

Carlisle Floyd

Attempt something so impossible that unless God is in it, it's doomed to failure.

John Haggai

It must not be forgotten in fairness to the National Government that apartheid is not just a policy of oppression but an attempt - in my opinion an attempt doomed to failure - to find an alternative to a policy of racial integration which is fair to both white and black.

Harry Oppenheimer

I'm sorry, but any police department in America that tries to function without some form of 'stop and frisk,' or whatever terminology they use, is doomed to failure. It's that simple.

William Bratton

Feminism is doomed to failure because it is based on an attempt to repeal and restructure human nature.

Phyllis Schlafly

It is important for investors to understand what they do and don't know. Learn to recognize that you cannot possibly know what is going to happen in the future, and any investment plan that is dependent on accurately forecasting where markets will be next year is doomed to failure.

Barry Ritholtz

When I complete a novel I set it aside, and begin work on short stories, and eventually another long work. When I complete that novel I return to the earlier novel and rewrite much of it. In the meantime the second novel lies in a desk drawer.

Joyce Carol Oates

I tried writing out a plot with the second or third novel I wrote, and it was so boring, so desperately boring.

Philip Pullman

Almost any tale of our doings is comic. We are bottomlessly comic to each other. Even the most adored and beloved person is comic to his lover. The novel is a comic form. Language is a comic form, and makes jokes in its sleep. God, if He existed, would laugh at His creation. Yet it is also the case that life is horrible, without metaphysical sense, wrecked by chance, pain and the close prospect of death. Out of this is born irony, our dangerous and necessary tool.

Iris Murdoch

Write out the story - rapidly, fluently, and not too critically - following the second or narrative-order synopsis. Change incidents and plot whenever the developing process seems to suggest such change, never being bound by any previous design.