Recent content by Paul Whybrow

"Ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn't illegal." Voltaire

Tact is after all a kind of mind reading. Sarah Orne Jewett

I feel very grateful that for some reason I was raised to believe that I had permission to explore the creative world. I’m very aware of what a privilege that is, because most people don’t grant themselves that permission, and I really think that’s the only thing that separates people that call...

“Giving a reader a sex scene that is only half right is like giving her half a kitten. It is not half as cute as a whole kitten; it is a bloody, godawful mess. A half-good sex scene is not half as hot; it actually moves into the negative numbers, draining any heat from the surrounding material.”...

“Books have a life. They breathe. When you write a book, it grows and changes. You learn from your characters after you create them. They come from you and you become them.” Chloe Thurlow

“Then I felt too that I might take this opportunity to tie up a few loose ends, only of course loose ends can never be properly tied, one is always producing new ones. Time, like the sea, unties all knots. Judgements on people are never final, they emerge from summings up which at once suggest...

Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Albert Einstein

I can’t stand innuendo, If I see one in a script, I whip it out immediately. Kenneth Williams

“Often those that criticize others reveal what he himself lacks.” Shannon L. Alder

All writing is presumption, of course, since no one knows what it is like to be another human being. Cynthia Ozick

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up. James Baldwin

We tend to accept information that confirms our prior beliefs and ignore or discredit information that does not. This confirmation bias settles over our eyes like distorting spectacles for everything we look at. Kyle Hill

Cure for an obsession: get another one. Mason Cooley

"Sometimes the loudest cries for help are silent." Harlan Coben

Money can't buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery. Spike Milligan