James Thayer famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

On opening sentences: "If in the first chapter a hurricane is going to blow down an oak tree which falls through the kitchen roof, there's no need to first describe the kitchen."
-- James Thayer

#Fall #Writing #Blow
I need time to develop the idea into a plot before I talk about it.
-- James Thayer

#Ideas #Plot #Needs
None of great sages of China preached the precept of love as a guideline for human behavior.
-- James Thayer

#Sage #Behavior #China
My experience is that an original and compelling idea for a novel is a rare thing.
-- James Thayer

#Ideas #Novel #Compelling
I've never discovered the idea for my next novel while I was still working on the current novel. Other writers don't suffer this.
-- James Thayer

#Ideas #Suffering #Next
I can only write one novel at a time. The author of the Perry Mason novels, Erle Stanley Gardner, often worked on four novels simultaneously, and produced a million words a year. I'm envious.
-- James Thayer

#Writing #Years #Four
When I was hired by the University of Washington extension school to teach the one-year fiction writing course - 96 classroom hours - I quickly determined that I knew only about an hour's worth off the top of my head.
-- James Thayer

#Writing #School #Years
I researched fiction writing for months before I taught my first class, much of it looking for strong techniques from bestselling authors.
-- James Thayer

#Strong #Writing #Class
My students - all adults - bring a lot of writing skill to the first class, and they and I get better as the class progresses.
-- James Thayer

#Writing #Class #Skills

When you can turn people on their head and shake them and no money falls out, then you know God's saying, "Move on, son."
These, in the day when heaven was falling, The hour when earth's foundations fled, Followed their mercenary calling And took their wages and are dead. The British regulars who made the retreat from Mons, beginning August 24, 1914.
The brand is lying about something, or at least misrepresenting it. When I read a bottle of shampoo or moisturizer or other beauty product, I always perceive a dark subtext. The words haunt me. It comes across as humorous to the reader/audience, but in fact the words really do make me a little bit queasy. Nothing is as easy or natural as consumer brands want us to think - no problem is as resolvable. Your hair will fall out, eventually. Yet we do have these brands, and we line our shelves with them. There's an inherent irony.
You've got to stand for something, or you'll fall for anything You've got to be your own man, not a puppet on a string
In all her twisted perfection she had made me fall helplessly in love with her. A life without her in it seemed pointless.
Back in the days when American billboard advertising was in flower [said Hemingway], there were two slogans that I always rated above all others: the old Cremo Cigar ad that proclaimed, Spit Is a Horrid Word-but Worse on the end of Your Cigar, and Drink Schlitz in Brown Bottles and Avoid that Skunk Taste. You don't get creative writing like that any more.
He [Hemingway] used a stand-up work place he had fashioned out of the top of of a bookcase near his bed. His portable typewriter was snugged in there and papers were spread along the top of the bookcase on either side of it. He used a reading board for longhand writing.
I can write better than anyone who can write faster,
We all love people who give credit to others for their success. Companies would probably do better with CEOs who didn't blow their own horn and ask for ridiculous salaries and new yachts every year.
The heart of a woman who loves will forgive many blows.

James Thayer famous quotes

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