Dy > Dy's Quotes

“I hate writing, I love having written.”
― Dorothy Parker

“He glanced up as I entered, and for a moment, looked almost surprised.
"Mr. Swift!"
"Ta-da!" I exclaimed weakly.
"You're still..."
"Still not dead. That's me. It's my big party trick, still not being dead, gets them every time.”
― Kate Griffin, The Midnight Mayor

“There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“Librarians are the secret masters of the world. They control information. Don't ever piss one off. ”
― Spider Robinson

“Some things you can never leave behind. They don’t belong to the past. They belong to you.”
― Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave

“I was unsure about many things in my life, but I was fairly certain God did not intend bacon to be made from a plant.”
― Suzanne Johnson, Royal Street

“People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in the ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing

1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”
― Elmore Leonard

“No one ever thinks they’re awful, even people who really actually are. It’s some sort of survival mechanism.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

“I'm talking about these people who've ended up in one life instead of another and they are just so disappointed. Do you know what I mean? They've done what's expected of them. They want to do something different but it's impossible now, there's a mortgage, kids, whatever, they're trapped...”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Be a little kinder than you have to.” We are all silenced by that. It seems impossible to argue with. Then Johnny says, “Never eat anything bigger than your ass.”
― E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

“High School Is Life’s Way of Giving You a Record Low to Judge the Rest of Your Life By.”
― Jenny Lawson, Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir