Gripping Quotes

• My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea.

  David Brin

  Character, Writing, Ideas

  16 Copy quote

• If an American audience is given a serious musical theater piece that is well produced, dramatically gripping and wonderfully acted, they'll respond to it.

  Carlisle Floyd

  Musical, Pieces, Serious

  7 Copy quote

• Everybody has a ‘gripping stranger’ in their lives, Andy, a stranger who unwittingly possesses a bizarre hold over you. Maybe it’s the kid in cut-offs who mows your lawn or the woman wearing White Shoulders who stamps your book at the library—a stranger who, if you were to come home and find a message from them on your answering machine saying ‘Drop everything. I love you. Come away with me now to Florida,’ you’d follow them.

  Douglas Coupland

  Book, Love You, Kids

  52 Copy quote

• Like a child who suddenly stops sobbing when he is clasped in the arms of his mother, such will be the grip of heaven upon our souls.

  Ravi Zacharias

  Inspirational, Christian, Mother

  Twitter post from May 10, 2015

  25 Copy quote

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• You spend a good deal of your life gripping a baseball, and it turns out it was the other way around all the time.

  Jim Bouton

  Success, Sports, Baseball

  52 Copy quote

• Father, we long for the clarity of Your truth to dawn upon our minds and for the immensity of Your love to grip our hearts.

  Alistair Begg

  Father, Heart, Long

  22 Copy quote

• I staggered backward-her one hand gripping my shoulder, the other still holding my wrists behind her-and she followed until my back hit the wall.

  Kim Harrison

  Wall, Hands, Shoulders

  4 Copy quote

• I don't even own a computer. I write by hand then I type it up on an old manual typewriter. But I cross out a lot - I'm not writing in stone tablets, it's just ink on paper. I don't feel comfortable without a pen or a pencil in my hand. I can't think with my fingers on the keyboard. Words are generated for me by gripping the pen, and pressing the point on the paper.

  Paul Auster

  Writing, Thinking, Typewriters

  "A Connoisseur of Clouds, a Meteorologist of Whims: The Rumpus Interview with Paul Auster". Interview with Juliet Linderman, therumpus.net. November 16, 2009.

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• I don't know why this is, but I really believe that things don't happen when we're trying to will them into being. They don't happen when we're waiting for the phone to ring, or the email to pop up in our in box. They don't happen when we're gripping too tightly. They happen - if they happen at all - when we've fully let go of the results. And, perhaps, when we're ready.

  Dani Shapiro

  Letting Go, Monday, Believe

  "The Manifest-Station Q&A Series: Best-Selling Author Dani Shapiro". Interview with Jennifer Pastiloff, www.themanifeststation.net. September 29, 2013.

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• His hands reached for me, gripping my hipbones and pulling me forward. he stared down at me, his voice low. "There are some things I will make time for, Jacqueline.

  Tammara Webber

  Hands, Voice, Making Time

  4 Copy quote

• If this was a normal cover for a normal book,I would tell it's FANTASTIC!GRIPPING! (according to all book covers they're fantastic and gripping)

  Pseudonymous Bosch

  Book, Normal, Fantastic

  4 Copy quote

• Gansey threw open his door. Gripping the roof of the car, he slid himself out. Even that gesture, Ronan noted, was wild-Gansey, Gansey-on-fire. Like he pulled himself from the car because ordinary climbing out was too slow. This was going to be a night.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Night, Fire, Climbing

  Maggie Stiefvater (2013). “The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, Book 2)”, p.190, Scholastic Inc.

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• The rule of thumb for the old backpacking was that the weight of your pack should equal the weight of yourself and the kitchen range combined. Just a casual glance at the full pack sitting on the floor could give you a double hernia and fuse four vertebrae. After carrying the pack all day, you had to remember to tie one leg to a tree before you dropped it. Otherwise you would float off into space. The pack eliminated the need for any special kind of ground-gripping shoes, because your feet would sink a foot and a half into hard-packed earth, two inches into solid rock.

  Patrick F. McManus

  Journey, Feet, Hiking

  35 Copy quote

• Beautifully written, intensely passionate and gripping, FALLEN grabbed me
  from the first sentence and didn’t let go. Its eerie future world and
  frightening mores provide an unforgettable backdrop to the story of Lilia
  Desjardins, the shade-hunter, and fallen-angel turned cop, Adam Montgomery.
  It’s Matrix, Blade Runner and Terminator rolled into a riveting love story
  and made better. Perfect. A must-read by an author who keeps you on the
  edge of your seat.

  Linnea Sinclair

  Letting Go, Angel, Eerie

  4 Copy quote

• Gripping my arm, Mother held it in the orange-blue flame. My skin seemed to explode from the heat.

  Dave Pelzer

  Mother, Blue, Flames

  Dave Pelzer (1993). “A Child Called It: One Child's Courage to Survive”, p.41, Health Communications, Inc.

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• I know that, as night and shadows are good for flowers, and moonlight and dews are better than a continual sun, so is Christ's absence of special use, and that it hath some nourishing virtue in it, and giveth sap to humility, and putteth an edge on hunger, and funisheth a fairfield to faith to put forth itself, and to exercise its fingers in gripping it seeth not what.

  Samuel Rutherford

  Flower, Humility, Exercise

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p.277, 1895.

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• The Dead and Those About to Die is a gripping, first-hand account of the desperate battle for Omaha Beach on D-Day by the legendary 1st Infantry Division, the Big Red One. On the 70th anniversary of that momentous event, John C. McManus’s tale of courage under fire is a vivid reminder that freedom isn’t free and that when the chips are down stalwart American soldiers will always answer the call of duty.

  Carlo D'Este

  Beach, Fire, Hands

  4 Copy quote

• Why are you worrying about YOU-KNOW-WHO, when you should be worrying about YOU-NO-POO? The constipation sensation that's gripping the nation!

  J. K. Rowling

  Worry, Should, Constipation

  64 Copy quote

• ...there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.

  Bret Easton Ellis

  Real, Hands, Ideas

  FaceBook post by Bret Easton Ellis from Jan 20, 2015

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• There is something about spending Christmas alone, naked, sitting by the Christmas tree gripping a shotgun, that lets you know your life is spinning dangerously outta control.

  Nikki Sixx

  Tree, Naked, Sitting

  Nikki Sixx (2008). “The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star”, p.32, Simon and Schuster

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• Gosh, what a gripping story. You must have been simply terrified. Meanwhile we went to Godric's Hollow and, let's think, what happened there, Harry? Oh yes, You-Know-Who's snake turned up, it nearly killed both of us, and then You-Know-Who himself arrived and missed us by about a second. Imagine losing fingernails, Harry! That really puts our sufferings into perspective, doesn't it?

  J. K. Rowling

  Thinking, Snakes, Perspective

  4 Copy quote

• I think we're always trying to avoid tropes. And I think that "Game of Thrones" has almost made killing people a cliche. For us, it wasn't about that. For six episodes, it's hard to invest in people, and I think when you kill a main character on television it really needs to mean something. So we certainly had talked about that, and I think we managed to juggle the ball to make a gripping, interesting and compelling finale. We feel that we didn't have to go there at this point because we had such few episodes.

  Miles Millar

  Character, Mean, Thinking

  Source: www.indiewire.com

  4 Copy quote

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• Breathes life into a vital but oft-neglected chapter of our history. Amy Belding Brown has turned an authentic drama of Indian captivity into a compelling, emotionally gripping tale that is at once wrenching and soulful.

  Eliot Pattison

  Drama, Captivity, Amy

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• In Leading with Honor, Lee uses gripping stories from the POW camps to engage the reader and teach invaluable principles of leadership. I highly recommend this book for developing leaders at all levels in any organization, military of civilian.

  William R. Looney III

  Military, Book, Organization

  4 Copy quote

• Joaquin Jackson's frank and colorful account of his long career as a modern-day Texas Ranger thrills like an action novel, yet the stories are true, sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, but always gripping. I could hardly put the book down. . . .The writing is superb.

  Elmer Kelton

  Book, Writing, Texas

  8 Copy quote