Jerome Stern quotes

“Dialogue is not just quotation. It is grimaces, pauses, adjustments of blouse buttons, doodles on a napkin, and crossings of legs”
-- Jerome Stern

Source : Jerome Stern (2011). “Making Shapely Fiction”, p.14, W. W. Norton & Company

#Buttons Quotes #Legs Quotes #Napkins Quotes

“When writers are self-conscious about themselves as writers they often keep a great distance from their characters, sounding as if they were writing encyclopedia entries instead of stories. Their hesitancy about physical and psychological intimacy can be a barrier to vital fiction. Conversely, a narration that makes readers hear the characters' heavy breathing and smell their emotional anguish diminishes distance. Readers feel so close to the characters that, for those magical moments, they become those characters.”
-- Jerome Stern

#Distance Quotes #Character Quotes #Writing Quotes

“If the atmosphere is to be foreboding, you must forebode on every page. If it is to be cold, you must chill, not once or twice, but until your readers are shivering.”
-- Jerome Stern

Source : Jerome Stern (2011). “Making Shapely Fiction”, p.89, W. W. Norton & Company

#Atmosphere Quotes #Pages Quotes #Cold Quotes

“Youd just be amazed what people will do. You really would. And not crazy people. Ostensibly normal people. When the right person touches the right button in someone, you can get them to do almost anything.”

“Comedy always pushes some buttons, because it wouldn't be comedy if it didn't.”

Source : "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

“The universe is not short on wake-up calls. We’re just quick to hit the snooze button.”

“The legs that I have made are far more perfect than the ones nature would have given me - my mother's side of the family have awful legs.”

“I think there's a little me hiding behind your leg, Chichi." "I'm Goten." "I'm Goku. Hi!" .... "Daddy!”

“We''d like to be welcomed with open arms and open legs”

“We stood back-to-back, blocking and striking in harmony; sometimes it felt like his arms and legs were an extension of me. I could count on him to keep them off me from behind.”

“It's not really a shorter skirt, I just have longer legs”

“So precious a talent as intellect never was given to be wrapt in a napkin and buried in the earth.”

Source : Sarah Grimke, Angelina Grimke (2015). “On Slavery and Abolitionism: Essays and Letters”, p.96, Penguin

“[T]hey stretch you on a table. Then they bid you close your eyelids, And they mask you with a napkin, And the anæsthetic reaches Hot and subtle through your being.”