Diana Athill quotes

“The extension of power offered by a pony, the ease and speed of movement, the tapping of unsuspected courage, the satisfaction of collaboration with another creature and of controlling it in order to improve the collaboration, the joy of fussing over it - of loving it - these, from the age of about eight to sixteen were the most completely realised delights of my life.”
-- Diana Athill

#Horse Quotes #Eight Quotes #Order Quotes

“You don't always have to go so far as to murder your darlings – those turns of phrase or images of which you felt extra proud when they appeared on the page – but go back and look at them with a very beady eye. Almost always it turns out that they'd be better dead. (Not every little twinge of satisfaction is suspect – it's the ones which amount to a sort of smug glee you must watch out for.”
-- Diana Athill

Source : "Ten rules for writing fiction" by Elmore Leonard, Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, PD James, AL Kennedy, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

#Eye Quotes #Glee Quotes #Watches Quotes

“An important aspect of the ebbing of sex was that other things became interesting. Sex obliterates the individuality of young women more often than it does that of young men, because so much more of a woman than a man is used by sex.”
-- Diana Athill

Source : Diana Athill (2009). “Somewhere Towards The End”, p.31, Granta Books

#Sex Quotes #Men Quotes #Interesting Quotes

“Read it aloud to yourself because that's the only way to be sure the rhythms of the sentences are OK.”
-- Diana Athill

Source : "Ten rules for writing fiction" by Diana Athill, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

#Writing Quotes #Way Quotes #Rhythm Quotes

“Writing shouldn't come between the reader and what's being described. It should be as transparent as possible.”
-- Diana Athill

Source : "'Getting things right'". www.theguardian.com. January 5, 2008.

#Writing Quotes #Should Quotes #Reader Quotes

“When God wanted to create the horse, he said to the South Wind, "I want to make a creature of you. Condense." And the Wind condensed.”

“I can make a General in five minutes but a good horse is hard to replace.”

“My family and I reside on a non-working farm, although we have a couple of horses and the usual stuff like pigs, cows, and chickens. We really don't have an honest-to-goodness farm, more of a hobby farm.”

“Well, I must tell you I write the scripts very close to the bone. So I'm writing episode seven now and couldn't tell you what happens in episode eight.”

“I can remember being eight years old and having infinite possibilities. But life ends up being so much less that we thought it would be when we were kids, with relationships that are so empty and stupid and brutal. If you don't find a way to break the chain and change in some way, then you wind up, as the rhyme goes: a murder of one, for sorrow.”

“When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it's the first personal computer worth criticizing. So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you'll rule the world.”

“The first time that I came to New York to work properly was the mid-'80s, but I was doing eight shows a week. You have no life. Going to a punk rock club - or whatever the music was at that time - would not have been on my agenda.”

“The Obama administration has issued numerous orders essentially suspending deportations, prompting a major spike in illegal crossings.”

“In order for answers to become clear, the questions have to be clear.”

“The search for safety takes its clearest form... in the compulsive-obsessive neurosis... to frantically order and stabilize the world so that no unmanageable, unexpected or unfamiliar dangers will ever appear.”