Plot Quotes - Page 28

• Bangkok 8 is one of the most startling and provocative mysteries that I've read in years. The characters are marvelously unique, the setting is intoxicating and the plot unwinds in dark illusory strands, reminiscent of Gorky Park. Once I started, I didn't want to put it down.

  Carl Hiaasen

  Character, Dark, Unique

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• In everything I've written, the crime has always just been an occasion to write about other things. I don't have a picture of myself as writing crime novels. I like fairly strong narratives, but it's a way of getting a plot moving.

  Peter Temple

  Strong, Moving, Writing

  "The Book Show" with Ramona Koval, www.abc.net.au. June 18, 2006.

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• In writing, I'm totally anti-plans of any kind. All my attempts to plan and plot novels have come to grief, and in expensive ways.

  Peter Temple

  Grief, Writing, Way

  "The Book Show" with Ramona Koval, www.abc.net.au. June 18, 2006.

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• Many of my favorite films, if someone were to tell me simply what they're about, I probably wouldn't be that interested. Plot often has so little to do with what's at the heart of a film.

  Shane Carruth

  Heart, Littles, Film

  "Shane Carruth on swimming upriver (and self-distributing) in ‘Upstream Color’". Interview with Guy Lodge, uproxx.com. April 16, 2013.

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• I think that sometimes, romantic comedies have to be really broad, and that the plot of people falling in and out of love or whatever is not enough. Enough Said had that stuff, but I wanted it to be fun and funny while also grounded in reality.

  Nicole Holofcener

  Fun, Fall, Thinking

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• When the plot flags, bring in a man with a gun.

  Raymond Chandler

  Gun, Men, Flags

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• There are those who maintain that in this world women have no right to interfere in the affairs of state, in politics, in plots and counter-plots. Others that are who, more chivalrous, are willing to admit that women have as much right to act, think, and speak as men.

  Belle Boyd

  Men, Thinking, World

  Belle Boyd (1865). “Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison”, p.461

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• And if I'm guilty of having gratuitous sex, then I'm also guilty of having gratuitous violence, and gratuitous feasting, and gratuitous description of clothes, and gratuitous heraldry, because very little of this is necessary to advance the plot. But my philosophy is that plot advancement is not what the experience of reading fiction is about. If all we care about is advancing the plot, why read novels? We can just read Cliffs Notes.

  George R. R. Martin

  Sex, Philosophy, Reading

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• A country is strong which consists of wealthy families, every member of whom is interested in defending a common treasure; it is weak when composed of scattered individuals, to whom it matters little whether they obey seven or one, a Russian or a Corsican, so long as each keeps his own plot of land, blind in their wretched egotism, to the fact that the day is coming when this too will be torn from them.

  Honore de Balzac

  Family, Country, Strong

  Honore de Balzac (2011). “Letters of Two Brides”, p.76, The Floating Press

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• yet it seems
  Life scarce can cast a fragrance on the wind,
  Scarce spread a glory to the morning beams,
  But the torn petals strew the garden plot;
  And there's but common greenness after that.

  William Butler Yeats

  Life, Morning, Garden

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.207, Simon and Schuster

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• The westward march has stopped, upon the final plains of the Pacific; and now the plot thickenswith the change, the pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face to face, to know each other and be known.

  Woodrow Wilson

  People, Faces, Groups

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• The plots of God are perfect. The Universe is a plot of God.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Perfect, Universe

  Edgar Allan Poe (2016). “Complete Works Of Edgar Allan Poe: The New Raven Edition”, p.3066, ShandonPress

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• Nothing aids which may not also injure us.
  Fire serves us well, but he who plots to burn
  His neighbor's roof arms his hands with fire.

  Ovid

  Fire, Hands, May

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• Good manners, Madam, are had these days not
  For your asking, nor mine, nor what-we-used-to-be's.
  The day is a loud grenade that bursts a smile
  Of serious weeds in a comic lily plot.

  Allen Tate

  Weed, Good Man, Asking

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.204, Macmillan

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• Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.

  Jane Rule

  Choices, Novelists, Fiction

  Jane Rule (1981). “Outlander”, Tallahassee, Fla. : Naiad Press

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• The plot! The plot! What kind of plot could a poet possibly provide that is not surpassed by the thinking, feeling reader? Form alone is divine.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Thinking, Feelings, Kind

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• Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme--
  why are they no help to me now
  I want to make
  something imagined, not recalled?

  Robert Lowell

  Blessed, Poetry, Want

  Robert Lowell (1979). “Robert Lowell: a tribute”

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• I have this very moment finished reading a novel called The Vicar of Wakefield [by Oliver Goldsmith].... It appears to me, to be impossible any person could read this book through with a dry eye and yet, I don't much like it.... There is but very little story, the plot is thin, the incidents very rare, the sentiments uncommon, the vicar is contented, humble, pious, virtuous--but upon the whole the book has not at all satisfied my expectations.

  Fanny Burney

  Reading, Book, Eye

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• One of the most striking elements of today's threat picture is that plots to attack America increasingly involve American residents and citizens.

  Janet Napolitano

  America, Citizens, Elements

  "Terror Threat 'Most Heightened' Since 9/11, Napolitano Says" by Jason Ryan and Devin Dwyer, abcnews.go.com. February 9, 2011.

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• The dominant metaphor of conceptual relativism, that of differing points of view, seems to betray an underlying paradox. Differentpoints of view make sense, but only if there is a common co-ordinate system on which to plot them; yet the existence of a common system belies the claim of dramatic incomparability.

  Donald Davidson

  Views, Common, Dramatic

  Donald Davidson (2001). “Inquiries Into Truth and Interpretation: Philosophical Essays”, p.184, Oxford University Press

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• I have never believed that there is a secret United Nations plot to take over the US... But, for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible.

  Gideon Rachman

  Thinking, World Government, Secret

  "And now for a world government" by Gideon Rachman, www.ft.com. December 9, 2008.

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• The spirit of Jane Eyre looms over Once Upon a Day.  Lisa Tucker keeps the plot of this gothic novel bubbling with tons of juicy family secrets.

  Stewart O'Nan

  Secret, Juicy, Spirit

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• When I'm at the premiere and I see the film in its entirety, I forget plot, I forget the story, I forget what my character goes through, because I really do just let it go.

  Tavis Smiley

  Character, Let It Go, Stories

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• There is a limited number of plots. There is no limit to the number of stories.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Numbers, Limits, Stories

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• The best calculation is the absence of calculation. Once you have attained a certain level of recognition, others generally figure that when you do something, it's for an intelligent reason. So it's really foolish to plot out your movements too carefully in advance. You're better off acting capriciously.

  Pablo Picasso

  Intelligent, Acting, Movement

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