If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.
François Mauriac
François Mauriac
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Thought For The Day
- Thread starter Paul Whybrow
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Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. Whether you love or hate history, whether you believe Mantel is factual or not. For me, this is a masterclass in how to be right inside a character's head.
He boiled down a hundred pages of mathematics into a simple equation. E =mc2 (c squared) or Energy = mass x the square of the speed of light.
A revolutionary insight which resulted in humans harnessing atomic energy. An amazing mind.
I wonder if I could boil my 400 page novel into a few sentences. It's what agent Pete tells us to do for our blurb but not being Einstein it ain't so easy.
A revolutionary insight which resulted in humans harnessing atomic energy. An amazing mind.
I wonder if I could boil my 400 page novel into a few sentences. It's what agent Pete tells us to do for our blurb but not being Einstein it ain't so easy.
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No-one does it all alone. Even Einstein had help along the way, from his first -physicist -wife.
I also like that he said, "If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what then is an empty desk a sign?" This gives me comfort when I can no longer see the top of my desk.
Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.
Stephen King
Stephen King
The walls of books around me, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world and its disasters.
Ross Macdonald
Ross Macdonald
We now know that memories are not fixed or frozen, like Proust’s jars of preserves in a larder, but are transformed, disassembled, reassembled, and recategorized with every act of recollection.
Oliver Sacks
Oliver Sacks
A short story is the ultimate close-up magic trick – a couple of thousand words to take you around the universe or break your heart.
Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman
(Hollywood’s) conception of what makes a good picture is still as juvenile as its treatment of writing talent is insulting and degrading.
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler
You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realise how seldom they do.
David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace
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Liberating. And no reason why they should, apart from those we connect with, and think of often.
When asked: “If you could edit your past, what would you change?” Peter Carey replied: “I’d get rid of all the commas.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Carey_(novelist)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Carey_(novelist)
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Some 'bad' things I would have to keep. Pivotal. Too much learning attached. One or two other things, I would edit if I could. Still much learning attached, but my second baby would have been OK. He would have made it, and there would be three living children.
That's where acceptance comes in.
That's where acceptance comes in.
I think he's ducking the question, but wittily.When asked: “If you could edit your past, what would you change?” Peter Carey replied: “I’d get rid of all the commas.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Carey_(novelist)
Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.
Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolver