Amy's quotes

(showing 1-50 of 152)

"Plotting is like sex. Plotting is about desire and satisfaction, anticipation and release. You have to arouse your reader's desire to know what happens, to unravel the mystery, to see good triumph. You have to sustain it, keep it warm, feed it, just a little bit, not too much at a time, as your story goes on. That's called suspense. It can bring desire to a frenzy, in which case you are in a good position to bring off a wonderful climax."
— Colin Greenland

1 person liked it

"We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page; we begin to see images. "
— John E. Gardner

1 person liked it

"Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open."
— Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within)

tags: soul, writing
60 people liked it

"Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation."
— Graham Greene

10 people liked it

"I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions."
— James A. Michener

tags: writing
184 people liked it

"For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die."
— Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life)

tags: books, reading
194 people liked it

"You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."
— Anne Lamott

165 people liked it

"Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past."
— Anne Lamott

93 people liked it

"Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

tags: confidence, inspirational, wisdom
10,578 people liked it

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."
— Marilyn Monroe

tags: best, life, love, mistakes, out-of-control, truth, worst
11,009 people liked it

"Whenever I feel the need to exercise, I lie down until it goes away."
— Robert Maynard Hutchins

tags: exercise, humor, laziness
5,957 people liked it

"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by frost."
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)

tags: frost, glitter, gold, lost, poetry, roots, strength, strong, wander, wither
6,314 people liked it

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: enemies, forgiveness, strategy
6,310 people liked it

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."
— Theodore Roosevelt

tags: inspirational
5,128 people liked it

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
— Maya Angelou

tags: angelou, maya
5,115 people liked it

"Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one. "
— Bill Gates

tags: humor, work
3,799 people liked it

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
— Thomas A. Edison

tags: edison, failure, inspirational
3,784 people liked it

"We read to know that we are not alone."
— C.S. Lewis

tags: reading
3,087 people liked it

"Well-behaved women rarely make history."
— Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

tags: it-s-so-true
2,343 people liked it

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."
— Ernest Hemingway

tags: good, writing
1,932 people liked it

"Inconceivable!"
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
— William Goldman (The Princess Bride)

tags: funny, humor, inconceivable, movies
1,742 people liked it

"If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself."
— Albert Einstein

1,916 people liked it

"If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain."
— Maya Angelou

tags: inspirational
1,451 people liked it

"I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it."
— Mae West

tags: humor, temptation
1,142 people liked it

"There are three types of lies -- lies, damn lies, and statistics."
— Benjamin Disraeli

tags: truth
914 people liked it

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

946 people liked it

"The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them."
— Maya Angelou

tags: people
872 people liked it

"I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman."
— Anaïs Nin

tags: men, women
857 people liked it

"The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly."
— Siddhārtha Gautama

tags: inspirational
804 people liked it

"Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind."
— Henry James

tags: kindness
660 people liked it

"Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living"
— Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)

tags: life
635 people liked it

"Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind."
— Rudyard Kipling

tags: words
544 people liked it

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
— Anaïs Nin

tags: growth
620 people liked it

"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."
— Sylvia Plath

tags: writing
583 people liked it

"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive."
— James Baldwin

tags: books, empathy, pain, reading
551 people liked it

"We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love."
— Tom Robbins

tags: love, sex
537 people liked it

"God has no religion."
— Mahatma Gandhi

tags: god, religion
532 people liked it

"Good books don't give up all their secrets at once."
— Stephen King

tags: books
477 people liked it

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."
— Ray Bradbury (Zen in the Art of Writing)

tags: writing
497 people liked it

"I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions. "
— Augusten Burroughs (Magical Thinking: True Stories)

473 people liked it

"Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before."
— Mae West

tags: evil, temptation
500 people liked it

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn to the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
— Frank Herbert (Dune)

tags: motivational, scifi
381 people liked it

"You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

tags: amorality, correct-way, individuality, my-way, only-way, right-way, the-way, your-way
432 people liked it

"Turn your wounds into wisdom."
— Oprah Winfrey

tags: inspirational, language, wisdom
391 people liked it

"Fiction is the truth inside the lie."
— Stephen King

tags: writing
337 people liked it

"So what? All writers are lunatics!"
— Cornelia Funke (Inkspell)

tags: humor, writing
242 people liked it

"One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper."
— Michael Cunningham (The Hours)

tags: fiction, life, writing
234 people liked it