Dialogue Quotes - page 12

When I first started, I didn't really know how to structure a play. I could write dialogue, but I just sort of failed beyond that, and kind of went wherever I wanted to go. (Sam Shepard)
The construction of short stories calls for a markedly different set of mind than work on a novel, and for me short stories are at once more interesting and more difficult to write than longer work. The comparative brevity of the story dictates more economical and accurate use of words and images, a limited palette of events, fewer characters, tighter dialogue, strong title and punctuation that works to move the story forward. If the writer is trying to illustrate a particular period or place, a collection of short stories is a good way to take the reader inside a house of windows, each opening onto different but related views-a kind of flip book of place, time and manners. View quote
Annie Proulx
Individually we can work on ourselves. By working on your own ego and developing truth, control, and an equitable inner dialogue, you individualize the spirit within you through the process of observation. If you work on yourself, the progress you make radiates invisibly to others, helping them and giving them courage, which also improves the global picture. After all-your ego is a part of the world ego, and as you control it, you lessen the overall influence of the world ego while expanding the presence of truth on our planet. View quote
Stuart Wilde
I think I was always writing books that had very clear scenic structures. I do tend to write in scenes. I do tend to have a fair amount of dialogue. And I do tend to use stories that don't sprawl all over the place, that have a very sharp focus in terms of how they unfold in time. View quote
Tom Perrotta
All my characters have got a big slice of me in them. A big piece of me, because it's my dialogue and this is the way I think and talk. View quote
Wilbur Smith
As a writer, I am an intellectual. I believe in the ideals of the Enlightenment, I believe in the written word, in dialogue and in truth. I hate lies more than anything else. Most of the time I react by writing. View quote
Henning Mankell
For myself, the only way I know how to make a book is to construct it like a collage: a bit of dialogue here, a scrap of narrative, an isolated description of a common object, an elaborate running metaphor which threads between the sequences and holds different narrative lines together. View quote
Hilary Mantel
Life is, to some extent, an extended dialogue with your future self about how exactly you are going to let yourself down over the coming years. View quote
Charles Yu
Writing dialogue is like writing a song, which I've done. View quote
Brian Azzarello
I think there's a lot of things that occur within the African-American community, that we would prefer to stay within the African-American community - that we get a little nervous when you start having scenes or dialogue that we know is going to be viewed and heard on a national or global scale. View quote
Gabrielle Union
I believe a good memoir should have all of the narrative elements of a novel: character development, dialogue, descriptive language, and metaphor. (Danielle Trussoni)
If there's anything I'm keen to get better at in my writing, then it's the writing of prose as opposed to the writing of dialogue. View quote
David Nicholls
Since its beginnings, American writing has been in dialogue with other literatures. View quote
Giles Foden
Life is suffering. Love is the desire to see unnecessary suffering ameliorated. Truth is the handmaiden of love. Dialogue is the pathway to truth. Humility is recognition of personal insufficiency and the willingness to learn. To learn is to die voluntarily and be born again, in great ways and small. So speech must be untrammeled, so that dialogue can take place, so that we can all humbly learn, so that truth can serve love, so that suffering can be ameliorated, so that we can all stumble forward to the Kingdom of God. View quote
Jordan Peterson
Interestingly enough, what you do in a relationship that works is that you actually fall in love with what they could be. They could be the person that you project onto them and fall in love with, but it's going to take a hell of a lot of work. Both parties have no shortage of flaws, so you're bringing your flaws together, and that's going to produce a lot of friction, and you are going to have to engage in a lot of dialogue before you reach that level of perfection that you originally had in the other person's eyes. But maybe you can do it. Maybe you can do it. And then you would live happily ever after. View quote
Jordan Peterson
Truman Capote famously claimed to have nearly absolute recall of dialogue and used his prodigious memory as an excuse never to take notes or use a tape recorder, but I suspect his memory claims were just a useful cover to invent dialogue whole cloth. View quote
Joshua Foer
Being published in Arabic is a strong and consistent wish I have. I live in the Middle East and want to be in some sort of an unpragmatic dialogue with my neighbors. View quote
Etgar Keret
A good argument, like a good dialogue, is always a proof of life, but I'd much rather go and read a book. View quote
Ali Smith
I like to talk about food, ingredients, and how to adapt recipes. It's a dialogue. View quote
Yotam Ottolenghi
Lots of people can write a good first page but to sustain it, that's my litmus test. If I flip to the middle of the book and there's a piece of dialogue that's just outstanding, or a description, then I'll flip back to the first page and start it. View quote
Carl Hiaasen
Dialogue means debates and everyone's point of view. (Kevin Hart)
Biographies are, in their nature, far more difficult to make into films than novels, because novels come with plots constructed and dialogue written, whereas I don't invent dialogue for my subjects or plot their lives for them. View quote
Claire Tomalin
Dialogue is the place that books are most alive and forge the most direct connection with readers. It is also where we as writers discover our characters and allow them to become real. View quote
Laini Taylor
We all have an ongoing narrative inside our heads, the narrative that is spoken aloud if a friend asks a question. That narrative feels deeply natural to me. We also hang on to scraps of dialogue. Our memories don't usually serve us up whole scenes complete with dialogue. So I suppose I'm saying that I like to work from what a character is likely to remember, from a more interior place. View quote
Lydia Davis
It's the hardening of these narratives that makes peace so difficult. If each side can see the narrative, the claims that the other has, then there is a much more likely possibility of making a resolution. But what I see is the opposite. There is a total disclaiming of the validity of the other side, and talk that I find really unsettling, the kind of chatter you get from ultra-right Israelis and Hamas is of annihilation. In that kind of dialogue, there's no way to move toward peace. View quote
Lawrence Wright