A Quote by William Gibson

To present a whole world that doesn’t exist and make it seem real, we have to more or less pretend we’re polymaths. That’s just the act of all good writing.

William Gibson

Quote Topics

Act Exist Good Good Writing Just Less Make More More Or Less Polymaths Present Pretend Real Seem Whole Whole World World Writing

Quote Author

William Gibson
American - Writer
Born: March 17, 1948

Living consciously reflects the conviction that sight is preferable to blindness; that respecting the facts of reality is more satisfying than denying them; that evasion does not make the unreal real or the real unreal; that it is better to correct your mistakes that to pretend they do not exist; and that the more conscious you are of facts bearing on your life and goals, the more wisely and effectively you can act.

Nathaniel Branden

It’s true that someone will always say that good and evil don’t exist: that is a person who has never had any dealings with real evil. Good is far less convincing than evil, but it’s because their chemical structures are different. Like gold, good is never found in a pure state in nature: it therefore doesn’t seem impressive. It has the unfortunate tendency not to act; it prefers, passively, to be seen.

Amelie Nothomb

Gay people exist. There's nothing we can do in public policy that makes more of us exist, or less of us exist. And you guys have been arguing for a generation that public policy ought to essentially demean gay people as a way of expressing disapproval of the fact that we exist, but you don't make any less of us exist. You just are arguing in favor of more discrimination, and more discrimination doesn't make straight people's lives any better.

Rachel Maddow

The whole trick is to make it feel like you're spying on real people's lives as they get through the day. When I'm writing, I have to trick myself as a writer. If I consciously say, 'I'm writing,' I feel all this pressure and somehow it doesn't feel as real as when it doesn't seem to count as much.

David O. Russell

The whole soul is in the whole body, in the bones and in the veins and in the heart; it is no more present in one part than in another, and it is no less present in one part than in the whole, nor in the whole less than in one part.

Giordano Bruno

We go to the office every day when we're writing - or supposed to be writing. It's not always productive, and there's a lot of procrastinating, just staring at the wall, like any other writing. But we just make ourselves go to the office every day for more or less the whole day.

Ethan Coen

I don't think that writing, real writing, has much to do with affirming belief--if anything it causes rifts and gaps in belief which make belief more complex and more textured, more real. Good writing unsettles, destroys both the author and the reader. From my perspective, there always has to be a tension between the writer and the monolithic elements of the culture, such as religion.

Brian Evenson

I think Stephen Crane too becomes trapped in a myth that poetry should be operating at a certain level, that there's the real world and the reflection of that real world. I don't exist in any of these historical periods. I exist in the period in which I'm writing the book. So I only attempt to frame this in a way that I myself relate to.

Douglas A. Martin

The whole process of having to put the thing into the world seems so antithetical to the act of writing. Poetry is slightly easier, because there's less money and fewer people involved. You just let a book of poems trickle out in the world, and it finds its own people. Novels are much harder, and you don't think you should have to do some of the things you're made to do.

Nick Laird

Make your influence a good one. Act in a way you would be proud of even if the whole world was watching, because your example could mean the world to just one person.

Lindsey Stirling

The screen is a window through which one sees a virtual world. The challenge is to make that world look real, act real, sound real, feel real.

Ivan Sutherland

Yoga's ultimate intent is to achieve something far deeper and more meaningful than just a better body or less stress and tension. Its ultimate aim is to help you hear your soul's call so that you can be consistently guided to make the best decisions - the ones that serve your highest state of wellbeing. In the process of doing so, you will necessarily be made more whole and act in such a way as to support the larger world of which you are a part.

Rod Stryker

The whole world, myself included, seem to have one thing in common; we're just a crowd of people who don't really fit in anywhere attempting to convince one another that we do. I guess I'll put my sunglasses on and pretend, like everyone else, that I too belong here.

Andrew McMahon

Science fiction is a great way to pretend you are writing about the future when in reality you are attacking the recent past and the present. You can criticize communists, racists, fascists or any other clear and present danger, and they can't imagine you are writing about them.