Story

Famous quotes containing the word story:

    A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige through being mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.
    Rebecca West (1892–1983)

    Even such is Time, which takes in trust
    Our youth, our joys, and all we have,
    And pays us but with age and dust,
    Who in the dark and silent grave
    When we have wandered all our ways
    Shuts up the story of our days.
    And from which earth, and grave, and dust,
    The Lord shall raise me up I trust.
    Sir Walter Raleigh (1552–1618)

    No one can write a best seller by trying to. He must write with complete sincerity; the clichés that make you laugh, the hackneyed characters, the well-worn situations, the commonplace story that excites your derision, seem neither hackneyed, well worn nor commonplace to him.... The conclusion is obvious: you cannot write anything that will convince unless you are yourself convinced. The best seller sells because he writes with his heart’s blood.
    W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1966)