Plot famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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Coherence and closure are deep human desires that are presently unfashionable. But they are always both frightening and enchantingly desirable. "Falling in love," characteristically, combs the appearances of the word, and of the particular lover's history, out of a random tangle and into a coherent plot.
-- A. S. Byatt -
Some movies I see today have the most dramatic plot points but the actors are not playing them dramatically.
-- Aaron Eckhart -
When we try to push the envelope, there are certain sectors of society that say this is a Zionist plot to sort of destabilize our country, or this is an American agenda.
-- Abdallah II -
Language is the ticket to plot and character, after all, because both are built out of language.
-- Aimee Bender -
I don't really write plots. I use history as the engine that drives everything.
-- Alan Furst -
If you over-plot your book you strangle your characters. Your characters have to have enough freedom and life to be able to surprise you.
-- Alan Lightman -
Remember, remember the fifth of November of gunpowder treason and plot. I know of no reason why the gun powder treason should ever be forgot.
-- Alan Moore -
I think modern television shows, with their intricate plots, are stimulating our minds. This is one reason IQs have been going up.
-- Alex Tabarrok -
The winner must promote social jusitce, remove corruption and discrmination, and stand against political, cultural and economic plots.
-- Ali Khamenei -
Friendship between two women is always a plot against another one.
-- Alphonse Karr -
Use what you know. Draw from it. It doesnt always mean plot or fact. It means capturing a truth from your experiencing it, expressing values you personally feel deep down in your core.
-- Andrew Stanton -
Grief doesn't have a plot. It isn't smooth. There is no beginning and middle and end.
-- Ann Hood -
Any plot you impose on your characters will be onomatopoetic: PLOT. I say don't worry about plot. Worry about the characters. Let what they say or do reveal who they are, and be involved in their lives, and keep asking yourself, Now what happens? The development of relationship creates plot.
-- Anne Lamott -
I confess that I cannot understand how we can plot, lie, cheat and commit murder abroad and remain humane, honorable, trustworthy and trusted at home.
-- Archibald Cox -
When you look back on your life, it looks as though it were a plot, but when you are into it, it's a mess: just one surprise after another. Then, later, you see it was perfect.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer -
So somehow, things that seem extraneous to the play in reality are not. The scene lasts 37 minutes, and you only need 12 minutes of that for the plot. But if you pull the rest of it out, it's not my play.
-- August Wilson -
Bigotrys birthplace is the sinister back room of the mind where plots and schemes are hatched for the persecution and oppression of other human beings.
-- Bayard Rustin -
It’s so real." "Most dreams are. It isn't until you wake up that you see all the plot holes.
-- Becca Fitzpatrick -
The cliches are that it's the most generic Starsky and Hutch plot you can find.
-- Ben Stiller -
'Harry Potter' shouldn't be children's first experience with suspense and plot turns.
-- Berkeley Breathed -
When I started in television, it was brand new. It was the miracle over in the corner of your room. Now the audience has seen every story line. People have heard every joke. They can predict the plot almost before a show starts. That's a hard, sophisticated audience to reach.
-- Betty White -
The audience today has heard every joke. They know every plot. They know where you're going before you even start. That's a tough audience to surprise, and a tough audience to write for. It's much more competitive now, because the audience is so much more - I want to say 'sophisticated.'
-- Betty White -
"Novels and gardens," she says. "I like to move from plot to plot."
-- Bill Richardson -
Every couple I know has side-by-side grave plots, but when we do it we're the biggest weirdos on the block.
-- Billy Bob Thornton -
To me, it all comes down to things being character-driven. It's hard for me to look beyond that. CG and all this cool stuff - so be it. But to me, it pretty much begins and ends with character-driven plots rather than technologically-driven plots.
-- Billy West -
The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
-- Billy Wilder -
God, I'd love to do a big commercial movie that made a lot of money and whose plot was interesting too.
-- Bob Balaban -
There is no better place to plot the death of a character than when you're miserable and working out.
-- Brad Meltzer -
Having a sense of purpose is having a sense of self. A course to plot is a destination to hope for.
-- Bryant H. McGill -
But nearly every woman I know has a roughly similar story - in fact, dozens of them: stories about being obsessed with a celebrity, work colleague or someone they vaguely knew for years; living in a parallel world in their head; conjuring up endless plots and scenarios for this thing that never actually happened.
-- Caitlin Moran -
I enjoyed doing the gag covers better than the story ones because they were usually simpler. A cover based on an incident in the plot took a great deal of staging to tell a little story that was still part of the book. And it had to make sense on its own.
-- Carl Barks -
I'm one of the lucky writers: plots come easily to me
-- Caroline B. Cooney -
I'm frustrated when I see movies in which I feel like the plot is being told to me instead of shown to me.
-- Channing Tatum -
Plots are no more exhausted than men are. Every man is a new creation, and combinations are simply endless.
-- Charles Dudley Warner -
I was lucky because logarithmic plots are a device of the devil.
-- Charles Francis Richter -
Storylines are how characters create the plots involved in their stories.
-- Chelsea Quinn Yarbro -
Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don't then worry about plot or themes. These things will come in almost automatically because the characters are now pulling the story.
-- Chinua Achebe -
The beginning of a plot is the prompting of desire.
-- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt -
My most enjoyable movie going experiences have always been going to a movie theater, sitting there and the lights go down and a film comes on the screen that you don't know everything about, and you don't know every plot turn and every character movement that's going to happen.
-- Christopher Nolan -
Sometimes my plot lines are so convoluted, I get calls from friends at 3 am saying; you SOB, you'll never pull this one off.
-- Clive Cussler -
No matter how many plots we uncover and disrupt, no matter how many terrorist organizations we degrade or destroy, another individual or group will rise to take their place.
-- Cofer Black -
I learned everything I know about plot from Dame Agatha (Christie).
-- Connie Willis -
Science fiction is an amazing literature: plot elements that you would think would be completely worn out by now keep changing into surprising new forms.
-- Connie Willis -
I don't relax, I don't celebrate. I sit and plot.
-- Conor McGregor -
Plot and character are virtually the same thing.
-- Daniel Keys Moran -
Living "in" a story, being part of a narrative, is much more satisfying than living without one. I don't always know what narrative it is, because I'm living my life and not always reflecting on it, but as I edit these pages I am aware that I have an urge to see my sometimes random wandering as having a plot, a purpose guided by some underlying story.
-- David Byrne -
Compelling characters are not cogs in the machine of your plot; they are human beings to whom the story happens.
-- David Corbett -
Games, by nature, have more plot options and non-linear qualities than TV and film.
-- David Duchovny -
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a completely ad hoc plot device.
-- David Langford -
A plot without action is like pasta without garlic, like Dolly Parton without cleavage, and like a writer without his similes.
-- Dean Koontz -
Enjoy the present, plot the progress, you'll still reach the goal
-- Debra Searle -
I don't plot the books out ahead of time, I don't plan them. I don't begin at the beginning and end at the end. I don't work with an outline and I don't work in a straight line.
-- Diana Gabaldon -
No enunciation of the Truth will ever be complete, no method of training will ever be suitable for all temperaments, no one can do more than mark out the little plot of infinity which he intends to cultivate, and thrust in the spade, trusting that the soil may eventually be fruitful and free from weeds so far as the bounds he has set himself extend....
-- Dion Fortune -
I don't care how good a song is. If it holds back the storyline, stalls the plot, your audience will reject it.
-- Dorothy Fields -
You keep waiting for the moral of your life to become obvious, but it never does. Work, work, work: No moral. No plot. No eureka! Just production schedules and days. You might as well be living inside a photocopier. Your lives are all they're ever going to be.
-- Douglas Coupland -
Storytelling is ultimately a creative act of pattern recognition. Through characters, plot and setting, a writer creates places where previously invisible truths become visible. Or the storyteller posits a series of dots that the reader can connect.
-- Douglas Coupland -
This element of surprise or mystery the detective element as it is sometimes rather emptily called is of great importance in a plot.
-- E. M. Forster -
I have a book coming out in September, for example, where the plot concerns counterfeiting, and I had to do a lot of research on that. Or on any legal matters, for example, I have to do a lot of research online.
-- Ed McBain -
Show me where Stalin is buried and I'll show you a Communist Plot.
-- Edgar Bergen -
Subplots bring realism to your main plot simply by existing – by interrupting the flow. Why is this? Because life doesn’t move forward all at once. Interruptions happen, change rushes in, we juggle three or ten balls at once. Readers don’t expect continuous narratives.
-- Elizabeth Sims -
Most short stories have but one plot. The very best, however, have what I call a plot-and-a-half – that is, a main plot and a small subplot that feeds in a twist or an unexpected piece of business that ads crunch and flavor to the story as a whole.
-- Elizabeth Sims -
I don't know exactly why the notion of homeownership has such a grasp on the American imagination. Perhaps as descendants of landless immigrants we turn our plots into symbols of stability.
-- Ellen Goodman -
At the time I begin writing a novel, the last thing I want to do is follow a plot outline. To know too much at the start takes the pleasure out of discovering what the book is about.
-- Elmore Leonard -
I've got to formulate a plot or end up in jail or shot, success is my only option, failure's not.
-- Eminem -
Some writers can produce marvelous plots without planning it out, but I can't. In particular I need to know the structure of a novel: what's going to happen in each chapter and each scene.
-- Emma Donoghue -
I used to be enamored of object-oriented programming. I'm now finding myself leaning toward believing that it is a plot designed to destroy joy.
-- Eric Allman -
Life has a very simple plot: first you're here and then you're not.
-- Eric Idle -
Every so often, you want to map out your plot mythology but never so specifically that you can't let a story surprise you. You want to allow the type of action of the writer's room so that you have the ability to take a left turn.
-- Eric Kripke -
Life has no plot. It is by far more interesting than anything you can say about it...
-- Erica Jong -
I try to write something that would interest anybody and keep them turning the page. You must have a plot and good storyline.
-- Ernest Gaines -
I'm not interested in plots. I'm interested only in the characterization of people and what they do.
-- Erskine Caldwell -
The first act of insight is throw away the labels. In fiction, while we do not necessarily write about ourselves, we write out of ourselves, using ourselves; what we learn from, what we are sensitive to, what we feel strongly about--these become our characters and go to make our plots. Characters in fiction are conceived from within, and they have, accordingly, their own interior life; they are individuals every time.
-- Eudora Welty -
Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else ... Fiction depends for its life on place. Place is the crossroads of circumstance, the proving ground of, What happened? Who's here? Who's coming?...
-- Eudora Welty -
When we submit our lives to what we read in scripture, we find that we are not being led to see God in our stories but our stories in God's. God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves.
-- Eugene H. Peterson -
God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves.
-- Eugene H. Peterson -
The world is a play that would not be worth seeing if we knew the plot.
-- Frank Moore Colby -
I'm more interested in plot than theme, but I hope my values find their way into my stories: kindness, sympathy, effort, and humor!
-- Gail Carson Levine -
In tragic life, God wot, No villain need be! Passions spin the plot: We are betrayed by what is false within.
-- George Meredith -
Most conspiracy theorists dont understand this. But if there really were a CIA plot, no documents would exist.
-- Gerald Posner -
Plot and melodrama were in every life; in some so briefly as hardly to be recognized, in others-in that of certain men and women in the public eye, for instance-they were almost in the nature of a continuous performance.
-- Gertrude Atherton -
Life's generally artless ... but it does get these occasional hard-ons for plot. It connects things, nefariously, behind your back, and before you know it you're in the final act of a lousy movie.
-- Glen Duncan -
I begin by writing paragraphs that don’t have an immediate relation to a plot. The sound of the story comes first.
-- Grace Paley -
The time has mainly gone on getting Inform into a decent shape for public use. I suppose the plot of 'Curses' makes a sequel conceivable when compared with, say, the plot of 'Hamlet' but none is planned.
-- Graham Nelson -
This means keeping many trails open at once, inevitably requiring a fairly 'parallel' plot. This plot should be discovered rather than announced, so show, don't tell.
-- Graham Nelson -
Life doesn't have plots and subplots and denouements. It's just a big collection of loose ends and dangling threads that never get explained.
-- Grant Morrison -
We live in our tales of ourselves, she thought, and ignore as best we can the contradictions, and the lapses, and the abrasions of plot against our mortal souls...
-- Gregory Maguire -
That is what I define as a novel: something that has a beginning, a middle and an end, with characters and a plot that sustain interest from the first sentence to the last. But that is not what I do at all.
-- Guillermo Cabrera Infante -
You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story, dallying with the details or following the course of the plot, you enter into characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart beating beneath their costumes.
-- Gustave Flaubert -
Movies are all about plot. Theater, even if it's story heavy, it's about ideas.
-- Harvey Fierstein -
We must clearly see that international hostile forces are intensifying the strategic plot of Westernizing and dividing China, and ideological and cultural fields are the focal areas of their long-term infiltration.
-- Hu Jintao -
Life and career are the same thing. Every life has to have a plot and a plan. You have to recognize this early and be quite cold-blooded in the discovery and articulation of that plot.
-- Iain Sinclair -
The plot is not very important to me, though a novel must have one, of course. It's just a line to hang the washing on.
-- Ivy Compton-Burnett -
As regards plots I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots.
-- Ivy Compton-Burnett
