Jessica Bell > Jessica's Quotes

“Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Americus, Book I

“If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.”
― George S. Patton

“That’s what love is like: mother of the greatest bliss and stepmother of the most tragic misery.”
― Stefanos Livos, A Life In A Moment

“Learn the rules, then break them intelligently.”
― Jessica Bell

“Think of literary fiction as a meal with intricate scents, flavors, and textures that you can’t recognize unless you chew with your eyes closed.”
― Jessica Bell

“Writing is my oxygen. Music is my carbon dioxide.”
― Jessica Bell

“If music were wind, I would live in a hurricane.”
― Jessica Bell, String Bridge

“Imagine you are the Earth and he is the Sun, that silence is tangible, and the stars are the souls of your previous lives.”
― Jessica Bell, String Bridge

“No matter how entertaining, diverse, concise, or detailed, a writing craft book is, it’s not going to work magic on you, it’s not going to suddenly make you a brilliant writer simply by reading it. You need to use what you read and learn in your own writing. Because that’s when you have those AHA moments. That's when it really sticks.”
― Jessica Bell, Show & Tell in a Nutshell: Demonstrated Transitions from Telling to Showing

“FLESH

I drop my wedding ring
in holy water.
I hope it repels;
the years
of hate
and hope,
so I can finally relate
to the son we made.”
― Jessica Bell, Fabric

“I don’t know how to pray,
but I’ve seen them do it
on TV; kneeling by a bed
in nightgowns, hands woven
like secret friends.”
― Jessica Bell, Twisted Velvet Chains

“Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fishbodies, bones. This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“Whatever may be the tensions and the stresses of a particular day, there is always lurking close at hand the trailing beauty of forgotten joy or unremembered peace.”
― Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart

“But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.”
― Khaled Hosseini

“He was going to live forever, or die in the attempt.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“If your characters write your story, rather than you writing your characters, it's like your dog taking YOU for a walk. Don't let them control you. Take charge and train them to listen to their master.”
― Jessica Bell

“Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff.”
― Harvey Pekar