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"Every word an author writes causes ripples, like tossing a stone into a pond. And you don't know where they'll go, or who they'll touch, or when they might come back to you. I think everything you do is kind of like that, too."
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Exlpore more Writing quotes
"You spill a lot of beans in historical fiction. Crime fiction is about spilling no beans at all. You spill the least beans you possibly can. So because I had already written historical fiction before I was really good at the spilling beans section, but the new skill I had to learn when I was writing Brighton Belle was difficult. I had to avoid the equivalent of shouting, "this character's a murderer! Look who did it!."
"Don't say it was delightful; make us say delightful when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers Please will you do the job for me."
"We write, edit, and rewrite the story of our own life employing descriptive words, metaphors, and symbols. Our lives are full of symbols including those supplied by nature and religion, which touch upon the mystical and spiritual aspects of life. Symbols inspire enduring hope by formulating idealist expectations."
"Writers aren't exactly people, they're a bunch of people trying to be one person."
"Don't go overboard in avoiding "said. Basically, "said is the default for dialogue, and a good thing, too; it's an invisible word that doesn't draw attention to itself."
Explore more quotes by Ellen Hopkins
"In fact, since the accident, Mom doesn't love anyone. She is marble. Beautiful. Frigid. Easily stained by her family. What's left of us anyway. We are corpses.At first, we sought rebirth. But resurrection devoid of her love has made us zombies. We get up every morning, skip breakfast, hurry off to work or school. For in those other places, we are more at home.And sometimes we stagger beneath the weight of grief, the immensity of aloneness."
"It's probably weird to think about an addiction like it's a sentient being, but that's how it feels. Like it's something living inside you. Something you can't get rid of because killing it means killing you. I can't really understand addictions to drugs or alcohol. Things that control you. But an eating disorder is an addiction you control. Wait, is that paradoxical? I prefer to believe not."
"Do you ever dangle your toes over the precipice, dare the cliff to crumble, defy the frozen deity to suffer the sun, thaw feather and bone, take wing to fly you home?"
"It's not easy to get close to anyone.... Everyone's afraid of everybody else.... maybe because we're all afraid of ourselves."
"You were a summer gift, one I'll always treasure. You were a dream I never wanted to wake up from. You opened my eyes to things I'll never really see. You're the best thing that will ever happen to me."
"Nonfiction speaks to the head. Fiction speaks to the heart. Poetry speaks to the soul. It's the essence of beauty. The essence of pain. It pleases the eye and the ear."
"Happiness, you see, its just an illusion of Fate, a heavenly sleight of hand designed to make you believe in fairy tales. But there's no happily ever after. You'll only find happy endings in books. Some books."
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