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"I am writing a book about the Crusades so dull that I can scarcely write it."
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"In the middle section of the book Mirabelle breaks into not one, but two houses near Belgravia Books. I had fun scoping these out - checking which windows looked least secure and figuring out how to scale the mews houses to the rear to get her inside. A man came out at one point, 'What are you doing?' he questioned me. 'The thing is, I'm writing a book,' I started with a smile. He waved me off, his hand as wide as a tennis racket. 'Everyone is writing a book, my dear,' he said. Between you and I, it's his house that MIrabelle ends up breaking into."
"In writing, you must kill all your darlings."
"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."
"Writers don't have to keep themselves honest. They have to keep themselves accurate."
"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."
"The great writer evokes the words that buried within hearts of readers."
Explore more quotes by Hilaire Belloc
"From quiet homes and first beginning, out to the undiscovered ends, there's nothing worth the wear of winning, but laughter and the love of friends."
"I have wandered all my life, and I have also traveled; the difference between the two being this, that we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment."
"Oh, my friends, be warned by me, That breakfast, dinner, lunch and tea, Are all human frame requires."
"Just as there is nothing between the admirable omelet and the intolerable, so with autobiography."
"An institute run with such knavish imbecility that if it were not the work of God it would not last a fortnight."
"Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death."
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