#disbelief

What do you know? Haven't you heard of suspension of disbelief? ↗

— Ed Wood

#do you know #haven #heard #know #suspension

One of the hardest things to believe is that anyone will abandon the effort to escape a charge of murder. It is extremely important to suspend disbelief on that. If you don't, the story is spoiled. ↗

— Rex Stout

#anyone #believe #charge #disbelief #effort

I would like to believe in the myth that we grow wiser with age. In a sense my disbelief is wisdom. Those of a middle generation, if charitable or sentimental, subscribe to the wisdom myth, while the callous see us as dispensable objects, like broken furniture or dead flowers. For the young we scarcely exist unless we are unavoidable members of the same family, farting, slobbering, perpetually mislaying teeth and bifocals. ↗

— Patrick White

#false-teeth #farting #myths #old-age #senility

In stories, when someone behaves uncharacteristically, we take it as a meaningful, even pivotal moment. If we are surprised again and again, we have to keep changing our minds, or give up and disbelieve the writer. In real life, if people think they know you well enough not only to say, 'It's Tuesday, Amy must be helping out at the library today,' but well enough to say to the librarian, after you've left the building, 'You know, Amy just loves reading to the four-year-olds, I think it's been such a comfort for her since her little boy died'—if they know you like that, you can do almost anything where they can't see you, and when they hear about it, they will, as we do, simply disbelieve the narrator. ↗

— Amy Bloom

#storytelling #writing #change

I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time Machine. The fact is, the Time Traveler was one of those men who are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness. Had Filby shown the model and explained the matter in the Time Traveller's words, we should have shown him far less skepticism. For we should have perceived his motives; a pork butcher could understand Filby. ↗

— H.G. Wells

#disbelief #intelligence #intelligence

I like using animals because they help suspend my reader's disbelief. We have certain ideas about dentists. We don't have many ideas about rhinoceros dentists. ↗

— Yann Martel

#because #certain #disbelief #help #i

A lot of the stories were highly suspicious, in her opinion. There was the one that ended when the two good children pushed the wicked witch into her own oven...Stories like this stopped people thinking properly, she was sure. She'd read that one and thought, Excuse me? No one has an oven big enough to get a whole person in, and what made the children think they could just walk around eating people's houses in any case? And why does some boy too stupid to know a cow is worth a lot more than five beans have the right to murder a giant and steal all his gold? Not to mention commit an act of ecological vandalism? And some girl who can't tell the difference between a wolf and her grandmother must either have been as dense as teak or come from an extremely ugly family. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#disbelief #fairy #family

This was when she asked him whether it was true that love conquered all, as the songs said. 'It is true', he replied, 'but you would do well not to believe it. ↗

— Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

#disbelief #gabriel-garcía-márquez #love #love-conquers-all #of-love-and-other-demons

A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate. ↗

— Steven Pressfield

#genius

Why do you look like cheese, Beka?" Nestor asked me quietly. "We've got help." I was too flummoxed to tell him I hadn't expected help to come so fast. Miracles aren't for the likes of me, didn't Nestor know that? Only the nobility gets them. ↗

— Tamora Pierce

#speechless #stunned #nobility