Top 1200 Literary Characters Quotes & Sayings - Page 17

If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.

SERIAL, n. A literary work, usually a story that is not true, creeping through several issues of a newspaper or magazine.

I read many wonderful novels, though I now find the idea of literary fiction obsolete.

A literary movement: five or six people who live in the same town and hate each other.

My memories of literary agenting are of a very happy time and there are surprising reminders of it coming back now.

I'm working when I'm fighting with my wife. I constantly ask myself-how can I use this stuff to literary advantage.

For if anything is capable of making a poet of a literary man, it is my hometown love of the human, the living and ordinary.

No one in my family was a reader of literary fiction. So, I didn't have encouragement, but I didn't have discouragement, because I don't think anybody knew what that meant.

If Carl Hiaasen and Donald Westlake had a literary love child, he would be Timothy Hallinan.

Notoriety and public confession in the literary form is a frazzler of the heart you were born with, believe me.

I did try very hard to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts.

Most of those people who saw themselves as literary types at university became bank managers.

I don't want to promote my own image either. I don't like going on television or mixing in literary circles.

I find that I am much slower in the beginning of a book. I am thinking of the plot, of the characters and who they are, and where they are going. I often throw out a lot of the writing I start with, because the characters and plot improve as I write. Or perhaps I should say it is my hope they will improve as I write.

He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.

The worldview implied by literary fiction is complex and ambiguous, trying to be faithful to the complexity and ambiguity of life.

My liking for Scandinavian crime fiction led me into exploring literary writers from the same countries.

A Literary Society is the most proper form for the introduction of our Order into any state where we are yet strangers.

People often ask me if I feel discriminated against as a black female director. I don't. I'm actually offered a ton of stuff. But I only want to direct what I write. And I prefer to focus on black female characters. What's most important to me is to put characters up onscreen who are not perfect, but who are human and flawed.

I might have simply settled down into an armchair literary life. I really don't know exactly why I didn't.

Once more I can climb about and remind you that a woman in this epoch does the important literary thinking.

I think it gets really dangerous, though, to do it on the show. I think that the writers and producers are very much aware of that and the dangers of putting characters together and what that can mean for the show. You know, it's possible it could kill the thing that holds the show together, the chemistry, sexual tension between the two characters.

I may fight the British ruler, but I do not hate the English or their language. In fact, I appreciate their literary treasures.

I can't do no literary work for the rest of this year because I'm meditating another lawsuit and looking around for a defendant.

In literary composition a well-chosen quotation lights up the page like a fine engraving.

I don't know quite how a story develops in my head. It is a bit chaotic. If I am working on a series, one of the main characters at least is already in existence as well as some setting and minor characters. Finding the other main character can be a challenge. Sometimes this character already exists in a minor role in another book.

You cannot predict literary success; the only way you can possibly aim for it is to do your thing and do it well.

English dialogue is the best in the world. So dry and direct. The Italian language is beautiful, but it is too literary.

Literary poetry in a painter is something special, and is neither illustration nor the translation of writing by form.

Some of the things I love the most are when a writer or a visionary takes on sort of an iconic character and then spins it. Like with Frank Miller, Batman was this one thing for basically forty years, and then Frank Miller came along and said he can also be this other thing. And Christopher Nolan came along and said he can also be this other thing. The idea of taking iconic comic book characters or superhero characters or mythic characters and subverting the genre or coming up with a new idea is something that's really interesting to me.

As a writer, I'm not convinced that we are the best equipped to understand how we go about the business of literary production.

Mere literary talent is common; what is rare is endurance, the continuing desire to work hard at writing.

History is the most aristocratic of all literary pursuits, because it obliges the historian to be rich as well as educated.

Are there any writers on the literary scene whom I consider truly great? Yes: Truman Capote.

I longed for literary celebrity even as I saw with my own eyes how little happiness it brought.

I'm starting to play lots more naturalistic, realistic people than when I first started. Maybe because I was doing character comedy shows, and I was doing slightly weird, oddball characters with weird accents, those were the characters that I got cast to play - which made perfect sense.

I was a businessman for 16 years of my life, so when I started writing, I wanted to keep my literary identity separate.

Robert Ludlum, all of them, write the absolute best they can. You can't tone it down. You just do what you do, and if it comes out literary, so be it.

When you create those characters that people love and care about and put them in a dark hallway, already the audience is on edge, and they feel empathy for that character. Then it's up to me to decide what jumps out in that hallway. So I think laying that foundation of strong characters and strong story is the most important thing in a horror film.

I did not win and in fact I was called into the principal's office for a consultation with my parents. But that was the beginning of my literary career.

I love these kind of movies as a kind of cinema-going geek myself. Those characters, you want to be like those characters when you go to the movies. You know, when you see a movie with a guy who's really cool and the killing's slick and easy. I don't know. There's something intoxicating about it.

I think it's human nature to go and to watch things that are done, and see the flaws, but I cannot think of anything that we would want to go so far as to completely change or redo to be honest with you. I think there are characters, you look at the Thor: Ragnarok trailer, there are characters that can evolve and can continue to change and grow throughout.

Growing up where I did, you met a lot of colorful characters whose business was on the other side of the law, or more likely you didn't know what they were up to, and you never would. So playing those kinds of characters now, I can draw on that. The rest of it, you can practice or learn from books. But mostly, I draw from my experiences. That's all I have, you know.

Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticising.

I am, of course, greatly honoured to win the Booker, which is one of the great literary prizes in the world.

I'm not a literary writer who is wedded to notions of realism and fiction. I believe that you can write anything if you can feel it convincingly.

Writing poetry is the only form of literary labour which gives me entire satisfaction.

I think our sexuality is all yet to be recounted and that the rich male literary tradition constitutes a huge obstacle.

If you look at that incredible burst of fantastic characters that emerged in the late 19th century/early 20th century, you can see so many of the fears and hopes of those times embedded in those characters. Even in throwaway bits of contemporary culture you can often find some penetrating insights into the real world around us.

When the literary class betray a destitution of faith, it is not strange that society should be disheartened and sensualized by unbelief.

My role in 'Legally Blonde' was really rewarding, because I had so much fun working on the movie. I've had really rewarding experiences on tiny low budget films that you'll never see but where I had a cool time creating characters as well. I love almost all of the characters I've played.

Literary criticism is generally bunk. Nonsense. Usually based on self-serving post-intellectual bullshit.

Science fiction, outside of poetry, is the only literary field which has no limits, no parameters whatsoever.

Literary fiction - if we must use the term - is not the plotless, meandering indulgence that its detractors would have you believe.

Characters that are not the norm or a bit out of the ordinary are always a challenge as an actress. You learn more by using different tools for those type of characters. They are always much more fun to play and much more interesting. They take you places that you wouldn't necessarily go in your everyday life.

You always take a little bit back with you at the end of the day. I always put a little bit of myself into the characters, too. You find parallels, points of connection, things like that. But I'm not an actor who gets so incredibly haunted by my characters that I can't come back.

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.

I love writing about men. To get by in the world you have to know how men think. Not that all guys think alike, but women tend to think about more things at the same time, an overgeneralization, but I find it easier to make my male characters focus than I do my female characters.

You don't have to be in the habit of going to church to listen to such a literary minister; you don't have to be a believer to be moved by Mr. Buechner's faith.

We're at a point nowhere it has to change. We have characters that are not alive that are alive in the book. We have characters that never appeared in the book. We have a lot of events that didn't quite happen the same way in the book. But there's so much in the book, stuff we've passed in the timeline that I really thought was awesome, that I really wanted to get to.