M Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with M. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world.”
“Many writers do write about their families and their immediate loved ones and love experiences, either as children or as adults. And very often people get offended by it.”
“Many writers lay very great stress upon some definite moral purpose, at which they profess to aim their works.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated)
“Many writers make the mistake of making their readers appear like Lazarus, without any iota of care, throwing down books to readers to crunch as if they are dogs.”
“Many writers over the centuries simply do not have the reputations they deserve because they were female, and that is an act of suppression.”
“Many writers profess great exactness in punctuation who never yet made a point.”
“Many writers secretly long to be performers. You always get the 'if you weren't a writer' question. I would be a back-up singer, to stand in the back and go like 'do, do, do.”
“Many writers struggle with exposition in their novels. Often they heap it on in large chunks of straight narrative. Back story – what happens before the novel opens – is especially troublesome. How can we give the essentials and avoid a mere information drop?
Use dialogue. First, create a tension-filled scene, usually between two characters. Get them arguing, confronting each other. Then you can have the information appear in the natural course of things.”
“Many writers tend to write summing-up books at the end of their lives.”
“Many writers today are wanderers. There is not only an unhousedness in language - how to convey, to say nothing of converge - but an unhousedness of place.”
“Many writers upon the science of political economy have declared that it is the duty of a nation first to encourage the creation of wealth; and second, to direct and control its distribution. All such theories are delusive.”
Source: Co-operation of Labor: Views of Senator Leland Stanford of California. An Interview ...
“Many writers were better before they became famous.”
Source: Serbian Satire and Aphorisms
“Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.”
Source: Reflections upon a sinking ship
“Many writers write because they’ve been there, seen that, did it and burnt their fingers”
Source: Pearls Of Eternity
“Many writers, especially male ones, have told us that it is the decease of the father which opens the prospect of one's own end, and affords an unobstructed view of the undug but awaiting grave that says 'you're next.' Unfilial as this may seem, that was not at all so in my own case. It was only when I watched Alexander [my own son] being born that I knew at once that my own funeral director had very suddenly, but quite unmistakably, stepped onto the stage. I was surprised by how calmly I took this, but also by how reluctant I was to mention it to my male contemporaries.”
“Many writers-in-waiting spend a lot of time avoiding the work at hand. The most common way to avoid writing is by procrastination. This is the writer's greatest enemy. There is little to say about it except that once you decide to write every day, you must make yourself sit at the desk or table for the required period whether or not you are putting down words. Make yourself take the time even if the hours seem fruitless. Ideally, after a few days or weeks of being chained to the desk, you will submit to the story that must be told.”
Source: This Year You Write Your Novel
“Many writing texts caution against asking friends to read your stuff, suggesting you're not apt to get a very unbiased opinion[.] ... It's unfair, according to this view, to put a pal in such a position. What happens if he/she feels he/she has to say, "I'm sorry, good buddy, you've written some great yarns in the past but this one sucks like a vacuum cleaner"?
The idea has some validity, but I don't think an unbiased opinion is exactly what I'm looking for. And I believe that most people smart enough to read a novel are also tactful enough to find a gentler mode of expression than "This sucks." (Although most of us know that "I think this has a few problems" actually means "This sucks," don't we?)”
Source: On writing: a memoir of the craft
“Many years after animating Ariel, I continue to draw her, doodling as I talk on the phone, absent-mindedly passing time in a sketchbook. She has become a part of me and yet now belongs to the world and generations to come.”
“Many years after regularly experiencing ‘Summit Brain’ atop Mauna Kea, I learned its real name was Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS) with High Altitude Cerebral Edema (HACE).”
“Many years afterwards, we attempt to solve puzzles that were not mysteries at the time and we try to decipher half-obliterated letters from a language that is too old and whose alphabet we don't even know.”
Source: So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood
“Many years ago, around the early 1980's, I penned a story about fruit crumble in a rather delightful, now defunct, magazine called Food Illustrated. The point of the piece was not so much the crust (to which I suggested adding coarse brown sugar or ground almonds or oats) or the luscious fruit (gooseberries, damsons, rhubarb or plums) that lay sleeping beneath.
The point was to identify what I consider to be the best bit, neither crust nor crumble but the layer of fruit-soaked dough that lies just beneath the crust. It is often a rich purple color or, in the case of apple crumble, the hue of heather honey. The hidden dough takes on a consistency that is both dry and wet and for which the most accurate description might be plumptious, if that was actually a word. I referred to it then as the undercrust, a term I have watched slowly spread.
The undercrust of a crumble is only one of several such silken treats that await us. The layer of soggy dough where shortcrust pastry meats gravy in a steak or chicken pie for instance. The point at which custard meets sponge in a trifle or, now I come to think of it, that bit of the suet dumpling that sits in the sauce of the stew, richly sodden with flavor and plump with aromatic liquor.”
Source: A Thousand Feasts: Small Moments of Joy… A Memoir of Sorts
“Many years ago, but we both know that love knows not the bounds of time”
Source: A Whiff of Scandal
“Many years ago, but we know that love knows not the bounds of time”
Source: A Whiff of Scandal
“Many years ago Christian pioneers had to fight savage Indians. Today missionaries of these former cultures are being sent via the public schools to heathenize our children.”
“Many years ago I also bought a house in Provence for about 70,000 francs. It had no electricity or running water, and no road leading to the house, but gradually we made improvements. It's my escape and I love it.”
“Many years ago I chased a woman for almost two years, only to discover that her tastes were exactly like mine: we both were crazy about girls.”
Source: The Groucho Letters: Letters from and to Groucho Marx
“Many years ago I found out something about hamburgers that really grossed me out. You may not know this, so I hope I don’t make you sick, but it turns out hamburgers are actually made out of dead cows. I am not making this up. Needless to say, as soon as I discovered that, I gave up meat entirely.”
“Many years ago I had two small children, and I wanted to be able to be home when they got home from school. And I didn't like the direction journalism was taking. I thought if I could write books, I could work at home and have the best of both worlds. I wrote my first mystery while still working full time, and it didn't sell, but the next one did sell, so I quit my job for the world of fiction. Scary, but I've never regretted it for a single day.”
“Many years ago, I made up my mind that, even if a person is 95 percent bad, you focus on the 5 percent that's good and decent---that's what you hold on to.”
Source: Funny Farm: My Unexpected Life with 600 Rescue Animals
“Many years ago I realized that a book, a novel, is a dream that asks itself to be written in the same way we fall in love with someone: the dream becomes impossible to resist, there's nothing you can do about it, you finally give in and succumb even if your instincts tell you to run the other way because this could be, in the end, a dangerous game--someone will get hurt.”
“Many years ago I remember a famous actress explaining to me with perfect seriousness that before making an entrance she always stood aside to allow God to go on first. I can also remember that on that particular occasion He gave a singularly uninspired performance.”
“Many years ago I resolved never to bother with New Year's resolutions, and I've stuck with it ever since.”
“Many years ago I sent an old, beloved jacket to a cleaner, the Sycamore Cleaners. It was a leather jacket covered in Guinness and blood and marmalade, one of those jobs... and it came back with a little note pinned to it, and on the note it said, 'It distresses us to return work which is not perfect.' So that will do for me. That can go on my tombstone.”
“Many years ago I was driven to the conclusion that the two major causes of most emotional problems among evangelical Christians are these: the failure to understand, receive, and live into God's unconditional grace and forgiveness; and the failure to give out that unconditional love, forgiveness, and grace to other peopleWe read, we hear, we believe a good theology of grace. But that's not the way we live. The good news of the Gospel of grace has not penetrated the level of our emotions.”
“Many years ago I was fishing, and as I was reeling in the poor fish, I realised, 'I am killing him - all for the passing pleasure it brings me'. Something inside me clicked. I realised as I watched him fight for breath that his life was as important to him as mine is to me.”
“Many years ago I was in another soap opera called The Newcomers which was on twice a week for three years. I really don't think I could do another stint like that again.”
“Many years ago I was part of a public health movement that raised concerns about the mercury in vaccines and about the heavy dose that infants get - used to. They don't anymore.”
“Many years ago I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.
But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts us absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many lifeless bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.”
Source: A Man Without a Country
“Many years ago in a period commonly know as Next Friday Afternoon, there lived a King who was very Gloomy on Tuesday mornings because he was so Sad thinking about how Unhappy he had been on Monday and how completely Mournful he would be on Wednesday.”
“Many years ago it was taught that plants and animals were composed of different materials: plants, of a chemical substance of three elements,- carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen; animals of one of four elements, nitrogen being added to the other three.”
Source: Natural Science and Religion: Two Lectures Delivered to the Theological School of Yale College
“Many years ago making movies was something. It was the major entertainment just to go to the cinema, once, twice a week. At the time, something like 400 million people went to the movies.”
“Many years ago Rudyard Kipling gave an address at McGill University in Montreal. He said one striking thing which deserves to be remembered. Warning the students against an over-concern for money, or position, or glory, he said: 'Some day you will meet a man who cares for none of these things. Then you will know how poor you are.'”
Source: Unfinished Business: Short Diversions on Religious Themes
“Many years ago someone told me something that I flatly refused to accept. And I still don't accept it now, despite all the times I've seen it proved right. "The common good and the individual good rarely coincide..." Sure, I know, it's true. But some truths are probably worse than lies.”
Source: Night Watch
“Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said Because it is there. Well, space is there, and were going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there.”
“Many years ago, there used to be something called ‘conflict of interest.’ No longer, I’m afraid. Today, we all bathe in the same river.”
Source: The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000
“Many years ago when I first started my career Maradona told me "to enjoy and play as you know", and that's stayed with me ever since and is the best advice I've been given.”
“Many years ago, a large American shoe company sent two sales reps to different parts of the Australian outback. A while later, the company received a telegram from each. The first said, 'No business here - the natives don't wear shoes.' The second said, 'Great opportunity here - the natives don't wear shoes.'”
“Many years ago, but not so long ago, there were those who said, 'Well, you have three strikes against you: You're black, you're blind and you're poor,' But God said to me, 'I will make you rich in the spirit of inspiration, to inspire others as well as create music to encourage the world to a place of oneness and hope, and positivity.' I believed Him and not them.”
“Many years ago, Clement Greenberg said, 'All profoundly original work looks ugly at first.' This should be updated now to 'All profoundly ugly work looks original at first.”
“Many years ago, I concluded that a few hair shirts were part of the mental wardrobe of every man. The president differs from other men in that he has a more extensive wardrobe.”
Source: Hoover After Dinner: Addresses Delivered by Herbert Hoover Before the Gridiron Club of Washington, D. C., with Other Informal Speeches