Famous Quotes & Sayings

Charles Dickens

If her eyes had no expression, it was probably because they had nothing to express. If she had few wrinkles, it was because her mind had never traced its name or any other inscription on her face.

Charles Dickens

"My comfort is," said Susan, looking back at Mr. Dombey, "that I have told a piece of truth this day which ought to have been told long before and can't be told too often or too plain..."

Charles Dickens

"You are a boy," said Mr. Dombey, suddenly and almost fiercely; "and what you think of, or affect to think of, is of little consequence. You have done well, Sir. Don't undo it."

Charles Caleb Colton

Living authors, therefore, are usually, bad companions. If they have not gained character, they seek to do so by methods often ridiculous, always disgusting; and if they have established a character, they are silent for fear of losing by their tongue what they have acquired by their pen--for many authors converse much more foolishly than Goldsmith, who have never written half so well.

Charles Caleb Colton

When certain persons abuse us, let us ask ourselves what description of characters it is that they admire; we shall often find this a very consolatory question.

Charles Caleb Colton

We should not be too niggardly in our praise, for men will do more to support a character than to raise one.

Charles Caleb Colton

Very great personages are not likely to form very just estimates either of others or of themselves; their knowledge of themselves is obscured by the flattery of others; their knowledge of others is equally clouded by circumstances peculiar to themselves. For in the presence of the great, the modest are sure to suffer from too much diffidence, and the confident from too much display.

Charles Caleb Colton

Words are in this respect like water, that they often take their taste, flavour, and character, from the mouth out of which they proceed, as the water from the channel through which it flows.

Charles Caleb Colton

Short as life is, some find it long enough to outlive their characters, their constitutions and their estates.

David Hockney

Well you can't teach the poetry, but you can teach the craft.

Geoffrey Chaucer

The life so short, the crafts so long to learn.

Demetri Martin

Glitter is the herpes of craft supplies.

Ben Nighthorse Campbell

You have to talk to the stone, and it has to talk to you.

Aaron Carter

I'm always studying my craft because I want to be the best at what I do.

Allen Ginsberg

First thought, best thought.

John Ridley

There are any number of very hard working people in Hollywood who deserve recognition. Mostly its the artisans and crafts persons - the 'below the line' workers - whose only reward is to be pejoratively labeled 'below the line' workers. I say get them all on the next thing smoking to Vegas for an all expense paid weekend of whatever.

Brooke Shields

I took my work seriously, but not as a craft. More as a life.

Czeslaw Milosz

We have become indifferent to content, and react, not even to form, but to technique, to technical efficiency itself.

Charles Stross

I don't do flash fiction.

China Mieville

I'd never been to a science-fiction convention until I became a professional writer.

China Mieville

I'm a science fiction and fantasy geek.

China Mieville

One of the things that I love so much about fantasy and science fiction is that the weirdness that it creates is always at its best completely its own end and also metaphorically and symbolically laden.

David Morrell

There are no inferior types of fiction, only inferior practitioners of them.

David Mitchell

Implausible truth can serve one better than plausible fiction

Chad Harbach

Fiction and nonfiction, for me, involve very different processes.

Kurt Vonnegut

What do my science fiction stories have in common with pornography? Fantasies of an impossibly hospitable world, I'm told.

Edith Wharton

Dialogue in fiction should be reserved for the culminating moments and regarded as the spray into which the great wave of narrative breaks in curving towards the watcher on the shore.