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Walter Mosley

Walter Mosley Quotes

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Famous Walter Mosley Quotes

“These short stories are vast structures existing mostly in the subconscious of our cultural history. They will live with the reader long after the words have been translated into ideas and dreams. That's because a good short story crosses the borders of our nations and our prejudices and our beliefs. A good short story asks a question that can't be answered in simple terms. And even if we come up with some understanding, years later, while glancing out of a window, the story still has the potential to return, to alter right there in our mind and change everything.”

IfsYearsMindLongHas BeensStillsIdeasStoriesDreamAsksBeliefNationsUnderstandingTermSimpleReturnReaderCrossesWindowPrejudiceStructureCome UpBordersShort StorySubconsciousIdeas And Dreams
Book:The Best American Short Stories 2003
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“A man's bookcase will tell you everything you'll ever need to know about him," my father had told me more than once. "A businessman has business books and a dream has novels and books of poetry. Most women like reading about love, and a true revolutionary will have books about the minutiae of overthrowing the oppressor. A person with no books is inconsequential in a modern setting, but a peasant that reads is a prince in waiting.”

KnowsMenNeedsPersonsBookDreamReadingFatherWaitingNovelModernSettingSettingsRevolutionaryBusinessmanPeasantsOppressorsInconsequentialMinutiaeBookcases
Author:Walter Mosley
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“The process of writing a novel is like taking a journey by boat. You have to continually set yourself on course. If you get distracted or allow yourself to drift, you will never make it to the destination. It's not like highly defined train tracks or a highway; this is a path that you are creating discovering. The journey is your narrative. Keep to it and there will be a tale told.”

IfsWritingCoursesProcessNovelPathJourneyCreatingTrainTrackTalesBoatDefinedNarrativeDestinationDiscoveringHighwaysDistractedTrain Tracks
Book:This Year You Write Your Novel
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“That’s how Ptolemy imagined the disposition of his memories, his thoughts: they were still his, still in the range of his thinking, but they were, many and most of them, locked on the other side a closed door that he’s lost the key for. So his memory became like secrets held away from his own mind. But these secrets were noisy things; they babbled and muttered behind the door, and so if he listened closely he might catch a snatch of something he once knew well.”

IfsThinkingMindWellsStillsMightLostSidesMemoriesSecretBehindsDoorsKeysRangeLockedDispositionNoisyClosed Doors
Author:Walter Mosley
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“Love, as the poet says, is like the spring. It grows on you and seduces you slowly and gently, but it holds tight like the roots of a tree. You don't know until you're ready to go that you can't move, that you would have to mutilate yourself in order to be free. That's the feeling. It doesn't last, at least it doesn't have to. But it holds on like a steel claw in your chest. Even if the tree dies, the roots cling to you. I've seen men and women give up everything for love that once was.”

IfsKnowsMenGivingFeelingsLastsMovingOrderDiesGrowsTreeReadyPoetGiving UpSpringMen And WomenRootsChestsSteelClawsSeducing
Author:Walter Mosley
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“Science fiction [is] the kind of writing that prepares us for the necessary mutations brought about in society from an ever changing technological world and as a result. The mainstream hasn’t excluded SF; the mainstream has excluded itself. No one told Jules Verne he was a science fiction writer, but he invented the 20th century.”

WorldWritingKindResultsFictionCenturyScience FictionMainstreamTechnological20th CenturyExcludedFiction WritersMutation
Author:Walter Mosley
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“I would have been completely brainwashed by this lopsided and racist view of the world if it weren't for my father. He was a deep thinker and an irrepressible problem solver. He was a Black Socrates, asking why and then spoiling ready-made replies.”

IfsWorldHas BeensMadeProblemFatherBlackViewsReadyAskingRacistThinkerBrainwashedAsking WhyProblem SolversIrrepressibleDeep Thinker
Book:What Next: A Memoir Toward World Peace
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“My father always taught by telling stories about his experiences. His lessons were about morality and art and what insects and birds and human beings had in common. He told me what it meant to be a man and to be a Black man. He taught me about love and responsibility, about beauty, and how to make gumbo.”

MenHumansArtStoriesFatherBlackHuman BeingsCommonResponsibilityTaughtMoralityLessonsBirdMeant To BeInsectsBe A ManTelling StoriesLove And ResponsibilityGumbo
Book:What Next: A Memoir Toward World Peace
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“I know how bad a thing it is to be a slave and I know how terrible it was but I don't believe that there's a free person in the whole world that knows how good a cup full of water can taste. Because you have to be a deprived slave, to be kept waiting for your water like we were to really appreciate how good just one swallow can be. When we finally got a drop on our tongues it was like something straight from the hands of the Almighty.”

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Author:Walter Mosley
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“Readers no longer need novelists to tell us what it's like to cross the world on a ship or fight a war. In the twenty-first century, we get that information in other ways. The thing that's still a mystery to us is the human heart. What we want is to understand people, what they're doing, and why they're doing it.”

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Author:Walter Mosley
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“... you should wait until the book is finished before making a judgment on its content. By the time you have gone through twenty drafts, the characters may have developed lives of their own, completely separate from the people you based them on in the beginning. And even if someone, at some time, gets upset with your words - so what? Live your life, sing your song. Anyone who loves you will want you to have that.”

PeopleIfsWantShouldWritingMayBookCharacterSongWaitingGoneLove YouJudgmentTwentiesFinishedUpsetLive Your Life
Author:Walter Mosley
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“... We must remember that there's more than one story and plot in every novel. There are at least as many stories as there are main characters, and each of these stories has to have multiple plots to keep it going - blood and bone, nerve and tissue, forgotten longing and unknown events.”

WritingCharacterStoriesRememberNovelBloodEventsLongingForgottenBonesPlotNervesMultipleTissuesMain Characters
Book:This Year You Write Your Novel
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