Outlines Quotes - Page 7

• I've never made an outline for any novel that I've written. Never.

  Don DeLillo

  Made, Novel, Written

  "Don DeLillo: "I'm not trying to manipulate reality – this is what I see and hear". Interview with Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. August 8, 2010.

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• I do outlines when I'm writing with someone, but they also need to have a certain amount of freedom

  Anne McCaffrey

  Writing, Needs, Certain

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• What are Raphael's Madonnas but the shadow of a mother's love, fixed in permanent outline forever?

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Mom, Mother, Son

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• "Undecided," while running for re-election to state Senate in 1998, in response to an Outlines questionnaire asking, "Do you favor legalizing same-sex marriage?"

  Barack Obama

  Running, Sex, Gay

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• I've often wished when I started a book I knew what was going to happen. I talked to writers who write 80-page outlines, and I'm just in awe of that.

  Charlaine Harris

  Book, Writing, Pages

  "Charlaine Harris, living and dying in Bon Temps". Interview with John Williford, www.popmatters.com. May 14, 2012.

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• I don't plot the books out ahead of time, I don't plan them. I don't begin at the beginning and end at the end. I don't work with an outline and I don't work in a straight line.

  Diana Gabaldon

  Book, Beginnings And Ends, Plot

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• It is already a great thing if the main ideas and general outline of a work come without any racking of brains, as the result of that supernatural and inexplicable force we call inspiration.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Inspiration, Ideas, Brain

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• A man of clear ideas errs grievously if he imagines that whatever is seen confusedly does not exist; it belongs to him, when he meets with such a thing, to dispel the midst, and fix the outlines of the vague form which is looming through it.

  John Stuart Mill

  Persistence, Men, Ideas

  John Stuart Mill (2008). “Utilitarianism and On Liberty: Including 'Essay on Bentham' and Selections from the Writings of Jeremy Bentham and John Austin”, p.65, John Wiley & Sons

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• In the case of various kinds of knowledge, we find that what in former days occupied the energies of men of mature mental ability sinks to the level of information, exercises, and even pastimes for children; and in this educational progress we can see the history of the world's culture delineated in faint outline.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Children, Educational, Knowledge

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Sir James Black Baillie (1931). “The Phenomenology of Mind”, p.16, Courier Corporation

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• By my existence I am nothing more than an empty place, an outline,that is reserved within being in general. Given with it, though, is the duty to fill in this empty place. That is my life.

  Georg Simmel

  Empty Places, Given, Existence

  Georg Simmel (2015). “The View of Life: Four Metaphysical Essays with Journal Aphorisms”, p.204, University of Chicago Press

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• I reject the word 'script' entirely-at any rate in the usual sense. I prefer the old usage-usually scenario-which it had in the Commedia dell'Arte, meaning an outline or scheme: it implies a dynamism, a number of ideas and principles from which one can set out to find the best possible approach to filming.

  Jacques Rivette

  Ideas, Numbers, Scripts

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• I've always thought that Boathouse Row looked best at night, when hundreds of electric lights outline the shape of each building, truning them into fantastic postcard themes. I knew, however, from many visits to Boathouse Row, that at the same time, armies of rats were holding maneuvers in the basements.

  Brad Alan Lewis

  Army, Night, Light

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• Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest creative thinkers of all time, strongly recommended the habit of meditation in the dark. He wrote: "For I have found in my own experience that it is of no small benefit, when you lie in bed in the dark, to recall in imagination, one after another, the outlines of the form you have been studying." He often awoke to find his problems solved. Da Vinci would often stand silent and motionless before a painting for hours, without using his brush, as though waiting for spiritual guidance.

  Wilferd Peterson

  Spiritual, Lying, Dark

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• To understand my feelings — and my conception of the role of Secretary General — the nature of my religious and cultural background must first be understood. I should therefore like to outline not only my beliefs but also my conception of human institutions and of the human situation itself.

  U Thant

  Religious, Feelings, Roles

  Thant (U) (1978). “View from the UN”, Doubleday Books

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• You know, a landscape painter's day is delightful. You get up early, at three o'clock in the morning, before sunrise; you go and sit under a tree; you watch and wait. At first there is nothing much to be seen. Nature looks like a whitish canvas with a few broad outlines faintly sketched in; all is misty, everything quivers in the cool dawn breeze. The sky lights up. The sun has not yet burst through the gauze veil that hides the meadow, the little valley, the hill on the horizon... Ah, a first ray of sunshine!

  Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot

  Morning, Art, Sunshine

  "Letters of the great artists - from Blake to Pollock". Book by Richard Friedenthal, 1963.

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• If ever I were to have a symbol attributed to me, it would be a heart, the outline!

  Rudolph Valentino

  Heart, Would Be, Symbols

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• I cannot outline. I do not know what the next thing is going to happen in the book until it comes out of my fingers.

  Patricia Reilly Giff

  Book, Next, Fingers

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• Color, which is the poet's wealth, is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Color, Wealth

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.80, Courier Corporation

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• As the spring comes on, and the densening outlines of the elm give daily a new design for a Grecian urn, — its hue, first brown with blossoms, then emerald with leaves, — we appreciate the vanishing beauty of the bare boughs. In our favored temperate zone, the trees denude themselves each year, like the goddesses before Paris, that we may see which unadorned loveliness is the fairest.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Spring, Years, Paris

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1863). “Out-door Papers”, p.238

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• Rather than make claims of final theories, perhaps we should focus on our ever-continuing dialogue with the universe. It is the dialogue that matters most, not its imagined end. It is the sacred act of inquiry wherein we gently trace the experienced outlines of an ever-greater whole. It is the dialogue that lets the brilliance of the diamond’s infinite facets shine clearly. It is the dialogue that instills within us a power and capacity that is, and always has been, saturated with meaning.

  Adam Frank

  Focus, Shining, Finals

  Adam Frank (2011). “About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang”, p.337, Simon and Schuster

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• Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid, and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars. Accordingly they invent systems which make the future calculable, at least in its main outlines.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Pirate, Would Be

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Unpopular Essays”, p.51, Routledge

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• I envy those writers who outline their novels, who know where they're going. But I find writing is a process of discovery.

  Jay McInerney

  Writing, Discovery, Envy

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• When you start, it's very cold, an impossible task. But then maybe the characters start to take on a little bit of life, or the story takes a turn that you don't expect ... With me that happens a lot because I don't outline, I just have a vague notion. So it's always felt like less of a made thing and more of a found thing. That's exciting. That's a thrill.

  Stephen King

  Writing, Character, Tasks

  "Stephen King on the Creative Process, the State of Fiction, and More". Interview with James Parker, www.theatlantic.com. April 12, 2011.

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• I would also argue that there is a good chance that an outline will help you stave off any onslaught of writer's block. Let me advise you right up front that I am not a big believer in writer's block. I think writer's block is God's way of telling you one of two things - that you failed to think your material through sufficiently before you started writing, or that you need a day or two off with your family and friends.

  Terry Brooks

  Block, Writing, Thinking

  Terry Brooks (2003). “Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life”, p.76, Del Rey

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• As for the story, whether the poet takes it ready made or constructs it for himself, he should first sketch its general outline, and then fill in the episodes and amplify in detail.

  Aristotle

  Writing, Firsts, Details

  Aristotle (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Aristotle (Illustrated)”, p.3458, Delphi Classics

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