#plot

...my novels are like life - I never know where they're going until I get to the end... ↗

— John Geddes

#life #plot #purpose #life

But he doesn't love her. I invented that. It is a plot if you imagine people in love--the lazy looping criss crosses of love, blows, stares, tears. No. It doesn't happen. No love. People meet, touch, stare into one another's faces, shake their heads clear, move on, forget. It doesn't happen. ↗

— Joyce Carol Oates

#people #plot #imagination

Reading a novel after reading semiotic theory was like jogging empty-handed after jogging with hand weights. What exquisite guilt she felt, wickedly enjoying narrative! Madeleine felt safe with a nineteenth century novel. There were going to be people in it. Something was going to happen to them in a place resembling the world. Then too there were lots of weddings in Wharton and Austen. There were all kinds of irresistible gloomy men. ↗

— Jeffrey Eugenides

#literary-criticism #literary-theory #narrative #nineteenth-century #novels

And it was during this period that Madeleine fully understood how the lover's discourse was of an extreme solitude. The solitude was extreme because it wasn't physical. It was extreme because you felt it while in the company of the person you loved. It was extreme because it was in your head, the most solitary of places. ↗

— Jeffrey Eugenides

#the-marriage-plot #love

One thing I learned, between addiction and depression? Depression a lot worse. Depression ain't something you just get off of. You can't get clean from depression. Depression be like a bruise that never goes away. A bruise in your mind. You just got to be careful not to touch where it hurts. It always be there, though. Darlene, in The Marriage Plot ↗

— Jeffrey Eugenides

#the-marriage-plot #marriage

The person you are (in total, at that moment in time) is what creates the story you're writing. It's infused in every piece of punctuation, in the plot, in the most minor character who crosses the page. It's all your voice. ↗

— Victor LaValle

#inspirational #narrative-perspective #plot #voice #inspirational

This was a characteroloical prelude, but it wasn’t chemical or somatic. It was the anatomy of melancholy, not the anatomy of his brain. ↗

— Jeffrey Eugenides

#chemical #marriage-plot #melancholy #mental-health #mental-illness

I enjoyed doing the gag covers better than the story ones because they were usually simpler. A cover based on an incident in the plot took a great deal of staging to tell a little story that was still part of the book. And it had to make sense on its own. ↗

— Carl Barks

#because #better #book #cover #covers

Show me where Stalin is buried and I'll show you a Communist Plot. ↗

— Edgar Bergen

#communist #i #me #plot #show

'Harry Potter' shouldn't be children's first experience with suspense and plot turns. ↗

— Berkeley Breathed

#experience #first #harry #harry potter #plot