Famous Quotes & Sayings

Charles Dickens

Be natural my children. For the writer that is natural has fulfilled all the rules of art.

Charles Dickens

To see the butcher slap the steak before he laid it on the block, and give his knife a sharpening, was to forget breakfast instantly. It was agreeable too - it really was - to see him cut it off so smooth and juicy. There was nothing savage in the act, although the knife was large and keen; it was a piece of art, high art; there was delicacy of touch, clearness of tone, skilful handling of the subject, fine shading. It was the triumph of mind over matter; quite.

Charles Caleb Colton

Eloquence is the language of nature, and cannot be learned in the schools; but rhetoric is the creature of art, which he who feels least will most excel in.

Charles Dickens

Mrs Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her clenliness more umcomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to godliness, and some people do the same by their religion.

Charles Dickens

We all draw a little and compose a little, and none of us have any idea of time or money.

Charles Spurgeon

Beware, I pray thee, of presuming that thou art saved. If thy heart be renewed, if thou shalt hate the things that thou didst once love, and love the things that thou didst once hate; if thou hast really repented; if there be a thorough change of mind in thee; if thou be born again, then hast thou reason to rejoice: but if there be no vital change, no inward godliness; if there be no love to God, no prayer, no work of the Holy Spirit, then thy saying "I am saved" is but thine own assertion, and it may delude, but it will not deliver thee.

Charles Spurgeon

Alas, if our children lose the crown of life, it will be but a small consolation that they have won the laurels of literature or art.

Charles Spurgeon

Come boldly, 'O believer, for despite the whisperings of Satan and the doubtings of thine own heart, thou art greatly beloved.

Alanis Morissette

I firmly believe that the only reason why I'm on this planet, the only reason why I live, breathe, and exist is, that it's my duty to be as honest as possible in my art.

Charles Stross

An important factor to note is that it's rare for anyone to sell a first novel written before they turned 30-35; long-format fiction tends to require a bunch of experience of human life that takes time to acquire. So your average mid-career novelist is in their forties to fifties!

Charles Stanley

If a person becomes content with what is average, minimally acceptable, or satisfactory, she will rarely exert the effort or work toward something that is truly excellent or outstanding.

Alan Guth

Space is certainly something more complicated than the average person would probably realize. Space is not just an empty background in which things happen.

Alan Greenspan

I was a fairly good amateur musician, and I was an average professional. But the one thing I saw was that the big band business was fading.

Aiden Wilson Tozer

Refuse to be average.

Chip Kelly

Last time I checked, there is no 'Hall of Average.'

David Cross

I'm pretty happy. I obviously have complaints about things, but for the most part, I'm on the above-average side of happy people.

Buddy Rich

Average band with a great drummer sounds great, great band with an average drummer sounds average.

C. J. Cherryh

Average people didn't analyze what they thought: they thought they thought, and half of it was gut reaction.

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.