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"One of the general patterns of good (i.e., striking and memorable) writing is the effect of repetition. If you use a certain element-a plot device, an image, a noticeable phrase-once, readers may or may not notice it consciously, but it doesn't disturb the flow of their reading. If you use that element twice, they won't notice it consciously-but they will notice it subconsciously, and it will add to the resonance of the writing or to their sense of depth and involvement (and if it's a plot device, it will heighten the dramatic tension). But if you use that element three times, everybody will notice it the third time you do it."
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Exlpore more Art quotes
"Not everyone who loves music can play the tune."
"It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists."
"The movies remind me of the Triangle Club at Princeton. I used to belong to it, and we always started out firm in our decision to create new and startling things. We always ended up by producing the same old show. In the beginning, our enthusiasm and ideals discarded as rubbish all the old fossilized plots."
"A stone is ingrained with geological and historical memories."
"Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art."
"Art is something that opens up and enhances your emotions and that's what I like to think I'm doing."
"The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity."
Explore more quotes by Diana Gabaldon
"When I turned 35, I thought, 'Mozart was dead at 36, so I set the bar: I'm going to start writing a book on my next birthday.' I thought historical fiction would be easiest because I was a university professor and know my way around a library, and it seemed easier to look things up than make them up."
"I put back my head, looking up at the deep black sky swimming with hot stars. If you knew they were really balls of flaming gas, you could imagine them as Van Gogh saw them, without difficulty . . . and looking into that illuminated void, you understood why people have always looked up into the sky when talking to God. You need to feel the immensity of something very much bigger than yourself, and there it is - immeasurably vast, and always near at hand. Covering you."
"As a rule of thumb, four consecutive lines of dialogue is about as much as you want to have without a tag."
"Mid-afternoon, I'll go out and do the household errands, come home, do my gardening, go for an evening walk."
"No matter how ugly the manner in which a man dies, it's only the presence of a suffering human soul that is horrifying, once gone, what is left is only an object."
"For months, people have been asking my views about the Scottish independence referendum, and I've been saying, 'It's not my country; I don't live here. Much as I love Scotland, I think it would be inappropriate to express a personal opinion regarding Scottish politics'."
"God, don't laugh!" Jamie said, alarmed. "I didna mean to make ye laugh! Christ, Jenny will kill me if ye cough up a lung and die out here!"
"The law's a necessary evil--we canna be doing without it--but do ye not think it a poor substitute for conscience?"
"For a different woman, a different relationship, a different situation, gentleness might have been the proper, the only approach-but not for this woman, in these circumstances. The only thing that will cleanse Claire (and reassure her: look at what she says at the end of it. She feels safe again, having felt the power and violence in him) is violence. And-the most important point here-Jamie pays attention to what she wants, rather than proceeding with his own notion of how it should be, even though it's a sensible notion and the one most people would have."
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